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JavaScript jQuery Basics (2014) Creating a Simple Lightbox Adding New Attribute Values with attr()

John Bell
John Bell
1,333 Points
Posted by John Bell
John Bell
1,333 Points

Opening a link in a new tab using JQuery

I'm trying to get all the links of a given class ('external') to open in a new tab. The error message from the Challenge Question is 'I was expecting target to be _blank not ``.

js/app.js 
$('#external a').attr('target', '_blank');
index.html 
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" title="no title" charset="utf-8">
  <title>Links Page</title>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>Links</h1>
  <ul>
    <li><a href="http://google.com" class="external">Google</a></li>
    <li><a href="http://yahoo.com" class="external">Yahoo</a></li>
  </ul>
  <script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.0.min.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
  <script src="js/app.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
</body>
</html>

2 Answers

Tim Knight
Tim Knight
28,888 Points
Tim Knight
Tim Knight
28,888 Points

John,

You'll want to adjust the selector you're using. # let's you select IDs just like a CSS selector. You want to do something like this instead:

$('a.external').attr('target', '_blank');

Which would be every link with the class external.

John Bell
John Bell
1,333 Points
John Bell
John Bell
1,333 Points

Thanks Tim. Much appreciated.

Sun-Li Beatteay
Sun-Li Beatteay
10,606 Points
Sun-Li Beatteay
Sun-Li Beatteay
10,606 Points

The selector you're using in JQuery is selecting all the link ("a") tags inside of the id "external". Looking at your html, you have a link with the class of "external" but with no links inside it.

Therefore, your JQuery should look like what Tim wrote; with a "." instead of a "#" and with the "a" tag before the class name. If the "a" tag is confusing to you, you can just not use it, though it's a good habit to include it.

$('a.external').attr('target', '_blank');

OR

$('.external').attr('target', '_blank');