You now know two kinds of links: relative paths to your own pages and absolute addresses to other people's websites. This chapter covers a useful extra attribute specifically for external links.

The problem: the visitor disappears

When someone clicks a link to another website, it usually opens in the same browser tab - your own website is then gone, and the visitor has to click back to return. For important internal links (like in chapter 14) that's exactly what you want. But for a link to a different website, it's often nicer if it opens in a new tab.

The target="_blank" attribute

<a href="https://www.fifa.com" target="_blank">FIFA website</a>

The target="_blank" attribute tells the browser: "open this link in a new tab instead of the current one." Notice: as mentioned before, a tag can have several attributes at once - here href and target simply sit next to each other, separated by a space.

An important security extra: rel="noopener"

Whenever you use target="_blank", you should also add one more attribute for security reasons: rel="noopener". The technical reason is a bit advanced (in short: the newly opened page could otherwise theoretically get access to your own page), but the fix is simple: just always add it whenever you use target="_blank".

<a href="https://www.fifa.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FIFA website</a>

Updating Finn's link

Update the FIFA link on your website so it opens in a new tab:

<h2>My Club</h2>
<p>I play for Sample Town FC. More info can be found on the
  <a href="https://www.fifa.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FIFA website</a>.</p>