Why does target="_blank" have an underscore in front? (2024) Published on: 2025-07-12 13:07:17 Ever wondered why you need the underscore in target="_blank" to open a link in a new tab? Before HTML5, developers used for SPA-like functionality, dividing the window into multiple frames, each with its own unique name . For example, the left frame might be name="sidebar" , and the right frame could be name="content" . When clicking a link, the browser needed to know which frame to load the content into. That’s where the target attribute came in. Clicking a link in the sidebar, for example, would load the content in the content frame: Now, if you had a frame named “blank” and used , the content would load in that frame. But if no such frame existed, the browser would create a new window (not a tab, as browsers didn’t support tabs at the time) and assign it the “blank” name. Clicking the same link again wouldn’t open another tab. So why the underscore in target="_blank" ? It’s simple - developers n ... Read full article.