Yes I do go with using Boilerplate .. why do from scratch when the same has already been done for you. plus logic matters , no one cares if built it from scratch or used boilerplate, atlast your final product matters. so how you take that boilerplate to its extent is the real job. boilerplate has it own advantage , you got to understand other code and continue developing from it, this way your analyzing skills gonna develop too. So i prefer Boilerplate

As you are saying you need to track the click , So as per my thoughts one you can open the popup on the same window only if the popup contains the info to get studied and has dependencies over current screen, so there is no way user will get irritated as after doing stuff in popup he can close the popup , its better then getting blocked. second you can open the popup on new window only if the popup has info that might be read or studied later and has no such dependencies over current screen info, this will let the user a option of checking ti later while doing current stuff. And we have several jquery and javascript plugin available that might replace the popup window.open such as bootstrap modal which cant be blocked , or jquery's modal. or jqxwidget Window, these might also come handy

Yes! you do have read right, but there are some catch. This actually varies Company to company , for most of the companies that are semi IT , they might expect exact and good syntax from you but for most of the big IT companies , A good concept is more important than a good syntax . Having a Good concept do means you are able to write code with good syntax when asked to do so , because that's important right! You should know the basic syntax for the programming language you are learning, but if asked for Interviews, Your concepts have majority for taking you to the next level. And yes i agree with your opinion that concepts are more important than the syntax._