Opening a new tab to read a PDF file

<a href="newsletter_01.pdf" target="_blank">Read more</a>

Target _blank will force the browser to open it in a new window

As everyone else has pointed out, this can work:

<a href="newsletter_01.pdf" target="_blank">Read more</a> 

But what nobody has pointed out is that it's not guaranteed to work.

There is no way to force a user's browser to open a PDF file in a new tab. Depending on the user's browser settings, even with target="_blank" the browser may react the following ways:

1. Ask for action
2. Open it in Adobe Acrobat
3. Simply download the file directly to their computer

Take a look at Firefox's settings, for example:

Chrome has a similar setting:

If the user has chosen to "Save File" in their browsers settings when encountering a PDF, there is no way you can override it.

An observation, _blank alone will not make sure the file is opened in a new tab. The response header for the file request should have Content-Type : application/pdf.

Try this link, it will open the file in new tab as the server provide required headers.

Same is the case for other file types also. For ex: video files get request should have proper Content-Type like video/mp4.