Hacksar

With the recent release of Firefox v3.5, I’m sure many people have upgraded their old versions of Firefox to take advantage of some of the new features that were placed in this release. However, there also seemed to be some “downgrades” (or maybe just bugs) in the release that I’m surprised that the developers/testers didn’t catch. For example, if you click a link in an external program (like an IM client such as AIM for example), and you have Firefox set as your default browser, the link will open up in the last tab you have open (rather than opening a new tab). In older versions of Firefox, the setting under Tools -> Options -> Tabs -> “Open New Windows in a New Tab Instead” would allow you to open external links in new tabs. However, now, it does not. Thankfully, there is a simple fix for it – keep reading for the solution.

1. Open up Firefox and type “about:config” into your address bar.
2. Promise that you’ll be careful at the confirmation screen and search for “browser.link.open_newwindow” in the search bar at the top of the page.
3. Double click on that option and it will open up a dialogue box with some number in it. Change this number to “3″ (without quotes) and press OK. Close the window, and now it should be fine. (You may need to restart your browser once.)

Clicking links from external software should open in a new tab. I know that this annoyed me A LOT when it didn’t work for the first day of having FF v3.5, but now it works so I’m content; hopefully you will be too.

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