554454 - Open links in new tab not working in 3.6.2

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Description

[bbains]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6.2

After updating from 3.6 to 3.6.2 I noticed that I no longer get a new tab opened when I click on a link.  For instance, when I use the search box, my search results would open in a new tab.  Now, they overwrite the page in the tab I'm currently on.  When I'm in website such as shopper.com I could click a link for a item listed and a new tab would open showing the vendor's site page for the item.  This also no longer works in 3.6.2.  I re-installed Firefox 3.6 and the "normal" behavior was back.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Navigate to a page (I was using Google Reader and shopper.com)
2. Type some search terms in the  Google search in the Menu Bar.
3. Run the search.
Actual Results:  
Search results are shown in the current tab instead of loading into a new tab.

Expected Results:  
A new tab should have been created to display the search results.  I would have 2 tabs open: Google Reader and the Google search results

Comment 1

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Please run in Safe Mode (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode) to check if an extension is the cause.

Comment 2

[bbains]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Please run in Safe Mode (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode) to check if
> an extension is the cause.

Ran in safe mode - issue still present.  I also uninstalled all add-ons and disabled the ones that didn't have an uninstall option within Firefox (Java environments, .NET runtimes).  Still exhibiting same behavior.

Comment 3

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Can you please better specify step 3 in your comment 0? How do you run the search? Pressing Return, clicking on the glass? It's expected that the current window is used when pressing Return alone. You have to press Alt+Return to get the search results opened in a new tab.

Comment 4

[bbains]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Can you please better specify step 3 in your comment 0? How do you run the
> search? Pressing Return, clicking on the glass? It's expected that the current
> window is used when pressing Return alone. You have to press Alt+Return to get
> the search results opened in a new tab.

I usually press the Enter key.  Firefox used to open a new tab when I did that. I could have sworn it was a setting in Firefox that controlled that.  Maybe it was being controlled by another extension or Greasemonkey script??

Comment 5

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

It depends on the value of browser.search.openintab inside about:config. If it is set to true, pressing Return will open the search results always in a new tab.

Sadly the behavior when using Return or the magnifier glass is mirrored. I believe there is a bug about having both in sync, but I can't find it right now.

Comment 6

[bbains]

Sweet!  I changed the setting in about:config and my problem is fixed.  You can close this bug report.  Thanks!

Comment 7

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Sweet!  I changed the setting in about:config and my problem is fixed.  You can
> close this bug report.  Thanks!

Thanks! I will close it as WFM.

(In reply to comment #5)
> Sadly the behavior when using Return or the magnifier glass is mirrored. I
> believe there is a bug about having both in sync, but I can't find it right
> now.

Gavin or Ryan, do you know if we have covered that already in a bug?