Peter Stuifzand

Load Firefox search in background tab

Today I noticed something that bothered me. When I search in Firefox through the right-click context menu the search results open in a new tab and Firefox switches automatically to the new page. I remembered there is option that makes Firefox open new links in the background and I thought that maybe this option was disabled. The option was enabled as it should be.

I opened a few links and it behaved as expected. The search results however still opened in a new tab in the foreground. This was unexpected. For me it seems that links and searches should open in a new tab in the background.

So I started a search for this behaviour. I found a bug from the Mozilla Bugzilla database Bug 695482 that seemed to call for the reverse of what I expected. There seem to be some strong arguments for this behaviour. There are even some that tests the suggest that the majority of people click on the new tab within 5 seconds of starting the search. I don’t think this a what I do. I am lucky that some people some disagree with this behaviour. These people created Bug 727131 that calls for the about:config option browser.search.context.loadInBackground that makes searches open in a background tab.

I enabled the option now and will try it some.

© 2023 Peter Stuifzand