Need to open links in new tab in ie8

I have a sidebar and when i click on a link in it, it opens a new window instead of new tab in IE8, (in firefox it open a new tab). What do i need to do to open links in IE8 in a new tab. I already set the Tools->Internet Options->Settings-> 'Always open pop-ups in a new tab' and 'A new tab in the current window' open in new tab but still doesn't work. My links are pretty simple, what am i missing ? exemple: text. Also some site are saying to register Regsvr32 actxprxy.dll to fix this problem, still doesn't work. And i want this to work with a simple click, no 'right-click->open in new tab' option. I also hope i won't get the 'can't change how ie8 works' answer. ;)
Here is a test file, but still not working with _blank...
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <hea ...