We’ve all experience this: you are happily doing your daily web surfing, clicking links here and there until you hit that one website. This annoying website has their web links all configured to open in a new browser window! Perhaps, now that every browser supports tab-based browsing, if the link opened in a new tab instead, it wouldn’t be as frustrating. But a new browser Window? Unacceptable. This behavior stems back to the early days of the Internet when webmasters weren’t overly warm to the idea of forwarding your attention to another site. Now, the web is nothing more than a series of links; so linking was necessary and expected. So the less than creative solution was to open outgoing links in a new window, then when the user was finished at that site, they would naturally close out the window only to see the initial site underneath. It was frustrating then, and even more so now.
Users who wish to change this behavior should know that the power lies within Firefox’s about:config. With a single parameter change, all links can be forced to open from within the existing tab – even links from clicks initiated from external applications.
- In the URL bar type about:config.
- Filter by the keyword browser.link.open_newwindow.
- To force links to confirm change the value of browser.link.open_newwindow from the default 3 to 1.
