If you are a regular visitor to bucketFountain, you may be aware the bulk of the links to other sites open in a new window. If you were to hover over the link prior to activating it, you will see the title tag displays “Link opens in a new window”. I use this technique so that there are no surprises. I realise that this pisses some people off.
If you use Moz, you can always hold down ctrl whist clicking and the link will open in a new tab in the background. If you use IE you do not have this functionality, but you can use shift and the link will open in a new window regardless, although it will not be in the background. I may move away from this in the future, and then leave it to the user/user agent to determine what they do with links.
In fact, if I can remember, I will do it from this day forth.