One aspect of popups that survived, was the ability of a website to spawn a new tab on click. I DETEST this behaviour. Not only because it breaks the back button, but tabs/windows are something I control, not you. I will decide when to leave your website for good, instead of opening a new tab.
Whoever invented target=_blank should be guillotined.
Even assuming that we lose that particular battle, I can't understand why the browsers won't make their right-click menus orthogonal and offer an "open in this tab" option.
Whoever invented target=_blank should be guillotined.