how about a customize option to have links open in new Tabs?

November 11, 2004 10:13 AM

Given the recent Firefox release / post, how about a customize option to have links open in new Tabs?
(Not sure about the technical ease / feasibility)
posted by daveg to Feature Requests at 10:13 AM (25 comments total)

Are you sure this isn't already supported? When I go to MeFi "Customize" (top o' the MeFi page), I get an option to open links in a new page. It's always worked fine for me (in Opera).
posted by five fresh fish at 10:16 AM on November 11, 2004

That's what the middle mouse button is for.
posted by smackfu at 10:24 AM on November 11, 2004

What smackfu said. Or set your MeFi preferences to open links in new windows, and your Firefox preferences to open all new windows in new tabs instead.
posted by gleuschk at 10:41 AM on November 11, 2004

Not possible in Firefox or HTML
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:45 AM on November 11, 2004

CTRL-click
posted by jpoulos at 11:34 AM on November 11, 2004

What everyone else said. Tabbed browsing is handled exclusively by the browser, not by the code. (Heck, even opening in new windows is a bit of an HTML hack, and not compliant with XHTML.) You have to middle-click or CTRL-click.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 12:03 PM on November 11, 2004

What, FireFox doesn't have an option to open new pages in a tab instead of a window? I find that hard to believe.
posted by five fresh fish at 12:09 PM on November 11, 2004

FFF: I use the middle button on a 3-button mouse, or right click/open in new tab. It is there, honest.
posted by dash_slot- at 12:12 PM on November 11, 2004

Not possible in code.

Possible in Firefox.

It's not a default option, but you can install a Firefox extension that will get the job done. Under "Tabbed Browsing" at https://update.mozilla.org, check out "Single Window 1.4" and "Tabbrowser Preferences 0.6.13".
posted by tomorama at 1:18 PM on November 11, 2004

Tab-browser extension on FF1.0 works for me with my settings on MeFi with "open in a new window".

My question is whether we can have the same option for the comments as well as the links. No idea if possible but I prefer to new-tab comments rather than click-through.

On preview, what tomorama said.
posted by karmaville at 1:19 PM on November 11, 2004

What, FireFox doesn't have an option to open new pages in a tab instead of a window? I find that hard to believe.

Me too, but it seems you need the extension. Does anybody know if there's anything in about:config?
posted by DrJohnEvans at 1:36 PM on November 11, 2004

Yes, it's built-in to Firefox now but must be enabled specifically. Check out this page. (Pointed to by the fine folks in this fpp.
posted by zsazsa at 2:03 PM on November 11, 2004

Yeah, even with "open in new window" in my customizations firefox doesn't open in a new tab for me.

Check out this page.

Thanks.
posted by The God Complex at 2:06 PM on November 11, 2004

Thanks, zsazsa!
posted by DrJohnEvans at 2:47 PM on November 11, 2004

I meant "Not possible in Firefox or HTML" for me to do anything that would make links open in new tabs. I asked on the moz developer lists two years ago and they never wanted target="_tab" to ever hit HTML.

Essentially, the only way to get what was originally requested is to do something on your browser side of things. There's nothing I can do to make it happen.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:18 PM on November 11, 2004

Middle mouse button does it for me, and I didn't download any special extension. At least, not on purpose.
posted by bingo at 7:17 PM on November 11, 2004

I guess I misunderstood you Matt. Anyway, the Mozilla developers are right. It would be incorrect to include such a feature in HTML since the language in its semantic form isn't meant to implement browser-specific features.
posted by tomorama at 7:40 PM on November 11, 2004

Hold the "Shift" key down when clicking on the link.....opens a new window (next best thing)
posted by SpaceCadet at 12:29 AM on November 12, 2004

Thanks Matt - it would've been nice, but hey I guess we have standards for a reason :<)
posted by daveg at 1:06 AM on November 12, 2004

But you can do it, daveg, even though Matt can't. In fact, when I browse mefi, links open in new tabs.
posted by Nothing at 2:51 AM on November 12, 2004

Nothing: I know that I can do it (after a fashion), but what I wanted was for the behaviour to be specific to Metafilter (I am now looking into developing a Firefox extension to do something similar)
posted by daveg at 3:57 AM on November 12, 2004

If you use TBE, you can have any link that goes to a different domain open in a new tab - even a new background tab if you like.

You should do that.
posted by cell at 4:43 AM on November 12, 2004

What I want is a feature that opens a link in a new tab, switches to that tab, and closes the old tab, since I'm not using it anymore. Any extensions out there that'll do this?
posted by DrJohnEvans at 9:01 AM on November 12, 2004

Whither Safari, eh?
posted by DenOfSizer at 4:40 PM on November 12, 2004

The Super DragAndGo extension might do it for you as well.

I'm pretty lazy and can't be bothered to move my index finger from the left mouse button to the center, so I simply left-click and drag a link slightly in any direction. It then opens in a new background tab.
posted by mkdg at 7:43 PM on November 12, 2004