Eh, it's kind of different when they're literally exploiting something in new versions of browsers that are actively updated and are going to get fixed.

Back then it was just supported behaviour and the dominant browser went several years without a major update. Like night and day.

Heck, popups still work in Chrome if they clickjack. There's no way to entirely disable popups on a site.

Chrome provides many content settings that tend to toggle between "disabled, ask, allow". It should be possible to provide an option for spawning windows even when originating from a user event (although there isn't one currently).

Are you saying to have a permission that would ‘disallow, ask, or allow’ me opening new tabs? Because that’s exactly what it sounds like to me.

The browser could just not make any new window as a result of a click in the content area.

Browsers implement the HTML spec, which allows for this behavior.

Browsers have been known to implement the spec only partially.

They’re not required to.

Indeed. Have you seen my site https://theannoyingsite.com/ ?

Your https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcFQeimLH1c is a 4.5-hour video, the first 5 minutes of which shows a completely static video track with an audio track of a guy talking slowly.

welcome to reverse engineering