293165 - Control+Click on URL should conform to Mac standard and open new window rather than new tab

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement)

Description

[rbanis]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050225 Firefox/1.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050225 Firefox/1.0.1

Control+Click on URL should conform to Mac standard and open a new window rather
than a new tab.

Reproducible: Always

Actual Results:  
Control+click currently brings up new tab.

Expected Results:  
Control+click should bring up a new window by default.

Perhaps option in preferences to allow control+click to open either new window
or tab?

Comment 1

[Gareth Randall]

> Control+Click on URL should conform to Mac standard and open a new window rather
> than a new tab.

Is this a Mac standard, or just what happens in Safari? Remember that Safari
doesn't have tabs. (See below for question on clicking.)


> Actual Results:  
> Control+click currently brings up new tab.

Control+click emulates a right mouse button click, so I presume you mean
Cmd+click? On my system Control+click brings up a context menu.


> Perhaps option in preferences to allow control+click to open either new window
> or tab?

There is an preference (Navigator:Tabbed Browsing) to choose between opening new
tabs and opening a new window instead.

Comment 2

[Steuard Jensen]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Is this a Mac standard, or just what happens in Safari? Remember that Safari
> doesn't have tabs.

Hmm.  My version of Safari (1.3.1) certainly has tabs; I wasn't aware that it had ever lacked them.  Perhaps tabs in Safari were a new feature introduced before I bought my Mac (spring 2004)?

> > Actual Results:  
> > Control+click currently brings up new tab.

> Control+click emulates a right mouse button click, so I presume you mean
> Cmd+click? On my system Control+click brings up a context menu.

I think that your guess is correct, and that the original reporter did mean Command+click.  As you say, Ctrl+click emulates a right mouse button in almost every Mac application (including Safari).  (Apple diehards might say that a right mouse button emulates Ctrl+click, of course.)


As for the originally reported issue, I don't think it's really accurate to say that Cmd+click opens a new window in Safari by default, at least when discussing tabbed browsing.  In Safari, Cmd+click only opens a new window if "Enable Tabbed Browsing" is turned OFF in the "Tabs" preferences.  As long as tabbed browsing is enabled, that preferences window explicitly lists that Cmd+click opens a link in a new tab, just as in Firefox.  To whatever extent Firefox should follow Safari's standard, it already does.

Thus, I'm resolving this bug as "Invalid".  Original reporter, if you don't feel that this discussion has addressed your concerns, feel free to make your case here and we can consider reopening it.