581906 - clicking on any underlined HTML link, on any site, overwhelms browser with scrolling tabs

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Doug Turet]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.2.7) Gecko/20100713 Firefox/3.6.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.2.7) Gecko/20100713 Firefox/3.6.7

Upon clicking on ANY AND EVERY Web site's underscored-text links (i.e. "Contact Us", "for more info, click HERE", etc.), the browser opens up (literally) 100 new tabs per second, which scroll from right to left at a speed that can only be compared to emptying a large bucket of marbles into a slanted chute. (Remember the "marbles" scene in Animal House? About like that!)

To date, the only ways to stop this have been: 

1) (MacOS 10.5)  Repeatedly right-clicking on the Firefox icon until the "Quit" option appears, then selecting and left-clicking it, (do this twice), then right-clicking the Firefox icon AGAIN, and left-clicking on the "Force Quit" option, forcing any and all work and correspondence to evaporate, but usually stopping the Grand Procession of tabs within 350-700 tabs, or

2)  (WindowsXP)  Pressing and holding down the CPU Power power button, thus "hard crashing" the entire system, re-booting it, deleting your present copy of Firefox, entirely, then downloading a new one, and hoping you'll eventually be able to re-create your Bookmarks summary.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Visit any website, anywhere, on any subject

2.  Find and click on an underlined-text HTML link ("Contact Us" has only rarely failed to produce the effect) 
3.  Sit back and watch the high-speed "movie" begin to unfurl! (The plot;s a little thin, after the first few times through, especially when you become familiar with the outcome, over and over again.)

(This happens so regularly, it's become the "rule", rather than the exception, whenever I have Firefox open!)
Actual Results:  
Click on the link, watch the top-of-display "browser waterfall begin... (It's that simple.)

Expected Results:  
The software should have opened a new page, or tab, and provided me with the means of contacting the site's owner or webmaster, as promised -- or led me to whichever additional page was indicated by the link in question.

I'm currently using the "brushed steel" theme, but the default theme produces the "desired" (not!) results, as well.

Comment 1

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Do you see the problem in safe mode? http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/safe+mode

Comment 2

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Looks like you have set Firefox to handle mailto: links. Can you please check this setting in Preferences | Applications?

Comment 3

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

As given by the reporter his mailto: setting is currently assigned to Firefox itself. You should re-adjust it so it will point to your email application. This should fix your problem.

This should probably be a dupe but I can't find the original bug. Closing as invalid for now.