lucy24 - 11:15 am on Aug 8, 2012 (gmt 0)

since W3C has 'dropped' the target='_blank' attribute

Says who where? I thought that whole issue was settled years ago.

A valid browsing context name or keyword is any string that is either a valid browsing context name or that is an ASCII case-insensitive match for one of: _blank, _self, _parent, or _top.

b/w

User agent implementors are encouraged to provide a way for users to configure the user agent to always reuse the current browsing context.

Nice :) Browsers should recognize it, but they should also enable users to override it.