1863827 - enter key no longer opens links in new window

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, defect)

Description

[John Covici]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/119.0

Steps to reproduce:

I am using Jaws screen reader if that makes a difference. went to www.google.com, hit enter on a link.

Actual results:

instead of opening in new window, seemed to replace the window.

Expected results:

should open link in new window ass I have it set this way in settings.

Comment 1

[John Covici]

This was using Windows 10 enterprise 22h2.

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Widget: Win32' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 4

[Ray Kraesig [:rkraesig]]

(In reply to John Covici from comment #0)

Expected results:

should open link in new window ass I have it set this way in settings.

I'm not aware of a setting that would do that. Can you specify which?

I believe the usual keyboard mechanism to open a link in a new window or tab is Control + Enter. Would that suffice?

Comment 5

[John Covici]

I believe the setting is open links in tabs instead of new windows and it is not checked. So, until now pressing enter on a link would always open a new window. Shift enter always does this, but the previous behavior was better.

Comment 6

[Ray Kraesig [:rkraesig]]

"Open links in tabs instead of new windows" does not affect whether the link spawns a new browsing context — it only affects whether that new browsing context is a window or a tab, if the link does spawn one. Most links, by default, do not.

I've just checked Firefox 66 (2019) and confirmed that its behavior is identical to Firefox 121.0a1 in this respect: pressing Enter is equivalent to clicking the link. It's possible Google used to provide different behavior and changed something recently — I don't use either Google or keyboard navigation often enough to know — but Firefox has not.

There are Firefox add-ons that provide this behavior, such as this one. Is it possible you previously had such an add-on installed?

Comment 7

[John Covici]

The behavior started happening recently, so maybe its another piece of software that is doing it. All I know is that up to recently pressing enter on a link with the keyboard, which is my only option since I am using a screen reader, used to always open the link in a new window. Now the extension you pointed to says it opens a link in a new tab, would that actually open the link in a new window for me?

Comment 8

[Monica Chiorean]

I reproduced your issue on Win10x64 (22H2) using FF builds 119.0 and 110.0a1 and having Jaws installed. If I have the option unchecked all links from google search open in new tab, If I select a link from email it opens in new window but this is expected like mentioned on comment#6. I also installed the add-on mentioned on comment#6 and if the option 'Open links in tabs instead of new windows' is unchecked then links open in new window.
Based on Ray's comments this bug works as intended. Can we close it as such? Thank you.

Comment 9

[John Covici]

hmmm, if you can reproduce this with Jaaws installed on windows 10 x64, this is my problem. I will try the add on suggested and see if that makes things work. Thanks.

Comment 10

[John Covici]

OK, the suggested add on solves the problem, so you can close this bug and thanks much.

Comment 11

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:dao, could you have a look please?

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