External server URL

I am having a similar issue. In my Drupal 7 site, to have an external URL in views, I was able to do the following under Rewrite Results for a given field:

* Select 'Output this field as a link'
* Use the [Replace Pattern] value in the Link Path field
* Click the 'External server URL' checkbox
* In my case, I also filled the Target field with '_blank'

Note that the Replacement Pattern in my Drupal 7 application did not use the http:// or https:// in the value (i.e., only strings like 'www.google.com'). That worked fine for opening other websites when the user clicked on the link.

For version 8.0.0, now I seem to have to do the following to get this to work in a similar way.

* Select 'Output this field as a link'
* For the Link Path field, I now need to put 'http://{{Replacement Pattern}}
* In this case, I also filled the Target field with '_blank'

Note that if I select the 'External server URL', the Replacement Pattern is not replaced, as yang_system noted in the original post. I suppose this is workable, but I am wondering why the 'External server URL' checkbox is even there anymore, especially since it seems to over-ride the Replace Patterns.

moving to the right queue and closing as duplicate for #2488540: Rewrite external links in views fields