Specify target in href links

[jakevdp]

It would be useful to be able to specify the target in href links within vega plots. One example is plots within the Jupyter notebook, for which a normal <a href=""> changes the window and can lead to a loss of state.

It would be nice to let this percolate up to Vega-Lite as well 😄

[domoritz]

As a workaround, for now, you can add some code to the page to show a warning before state is lost. https://stackoverflow.com/a/1119324/214950

[jheer]

Note that if you shift-click you should get the link to open in a new tab. At least, that works in a normal web deployment of Vega.

[jheer]

TODOs to service this request:

1. Update vega-view to ensure shared view.loader is passed to scenegraph handler instance.
2. Update vega-loader to include a 'target' option to set global href link target.

[jheer]

Added via updates to vega-view and vega-loader. Once the next Vega version is released, the following will set the default link target within the URL sanitization and loading system:

new vega.View(runtimeSpec, {
  loader: vega.loader({target: '_blank'})
});

Perhaps vega-embed should also be updated to expose target as a parameter?

[ted-dunstone]

Would it be possible to provide a simple example showing how this could be achieved (updating the target) in a jupterlab notebook?

[domoritz]

I don't have the time to make a full example right now but I think you can just pass a dictionary with {'target': '_blank'} to the Vega-Embed loader option property.