Sitecore 8 – General Link Field – Internal Link – Target doesn’t render properly

I recently ran into an issue with versions of Sitecore 8 through Update 3, where that if you use a General Link field and choose an Internal Link, the target attribute will be incorrectly set.

If you choose New Browser, your target attribute will actually render as “New Browser” as in:

[code lang=”html”]
<a href="/somepage" target="New Browser">Some Page</a>
[/code]

In the case where you choose “Active Browser”, it will render as follows:

[code lang=”html”]
<a href="/somepage" target="Active Browser">Some Page</a>
[/code]

Of course, the correct renderings are:

[code lang=”html”]
<a href="/somepage" target="_blank">Some Page</a>
<a href="/somepage">Some Page</a>
[/code]

If you want to fix this, you will have to modify some items in the Core database.

/sitecore/client/Applications/Dialogs/InsertLinkViaTreeDialog/PageSettings/Targets/Active Browser
• Set the display name to a space – “ “ (it needs a space, because setting the display name to an empty string unsets the display name)

/sitecore/client/Applications/Dialogs/InsertLinkViaTreeDialog/PageSettings/Targets/New Browser
• Set the display name to “_blank”

It works, but unfortunately, this is what the drop down ends up looking like in the UI:

 

general link