Links open in new Window by Deafault?

I’m not sure how that could be done but would reasoning convince you to not do that?

Having all your links open new windows is bad for navigation and irritates the hell out of users/visitors.

[edit: I didn’t explain that fully, so here goes;]

A browser’s back button is the most used navigation button ever. Opening in new windows means no back links. Which means you will possibly loose visitors.

Secondly, you take away a user’s ability to make choices about your site, a lot of users don’t like that.

New windows also give you a very crowded task bar. Way to create a nightmare.

You can go right ahead and ignore this though, it’s up to you.

Fair point, but hopefully it will encourage them to stay on my page, and not to navigate away from my blog all together…

If your content holds their interest then you’re okay, but screwing with the browser’s navigation can lead to disgruntled users, I know I’ve experienced that.

For example, I was reading this tutorial a week ago that had the next and back navigation open automatically in new windows, following through was a nightmare because every time I pressed next for the next section it opened in a new window, and if I wanted to back track it did the same.

It drove me crazy and I left the site shortly after.

I open new windows sparingly, if you really want to open new windows a good use is for opening external links –ones that navigate away from your site- in new windows. That’s an okay practice is my books, some people style external links differently but I never notice the difference.

Whether I agree or disagree with opening links in new windows (or tabs for people intelligent enough to be using FireFox) is not relevant. Answering your questions is. Here’s the location of the code you’re looking for:

wp-includes/js/tinymce/themes/advanced/link.htm

Locate the line:

<option value="_blank">{$lang_insert_link_target_blank}</option>

and add the word “selected” so it looks like this:

<option value="_blank" selected>{$lang_insert_link_target_blank}</option>

This information valid for Version 2.1.2, and as always, your mileage may vary.

Actually, you should add selected=”selected” This will be better for XHTML compliance, as in XHTML, all attributes must be quoted. See here for a discussion of this:
https://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_syntax.asp

Here’s how it should be:
<option value="_blank" selected="selected">{$lang_insert_link_target_blank}</option>