title: Why do links with rel="noopener noreferrer" always open in a new tab?
body: <p>We have a website with multiple links to a web application. The intended behaviour is that the first click on any of the link should open the web application in a new tab, any subsequent click should open the web app in the same new tab.</p>
  
  <p>We do this because our users only want one instance of the web app open at the same time.</p>
  
  <p>This works with adding the <code>target</code>attribute to the links:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;a https://example.com" target="webapp-tab"&gt;Link 1&lt;/a&gt;
  &lt;a https://example.com" target="webapp-tab"&gt;Link 2&lt;/a&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But our CMS automatically adds <code>rel="noopener noreferrer"</code> to all links, so the links will look like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;a https://example.com" target="webapp-tab" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;Link 1&lt;/a&gt;
  &lt;a https://example.com" target="webapp-tab" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;Link 2&lt;/a&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The problem is that this changes the behaviour. Each click on any of the links will now open a new tab.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a specific reason why the behaviour changes? From what I understand the difference should only be that no referrer and opener information will be sent with the request, but why does it open in a new tab? </p>
  
  <p>Is there anything I can do to keep the original behaviour even if <code>rel="noopener noreferrer"</code> is added to the links.</p>