Open web page in new window or new tab?

by Oscar Sodani

March 18, 2006

Oscar Sodani is a founder of Help2Go and owner of Help2Go Networks, an IT consulting firm in the Washington D.C. area. Oscar holds the CISSP certification as well as industry certifications from Microsoft, Cisco and Novell.

Something that used to urk me quite a bit was when you would click a link on a web site, and it would open the link in a new browser window rather than the one you are in. I find it even more annoying now that I use Firefox, since with Firefox all the web sites I look at are in a single window, separated by tabs.

As a webmaster, I understand why the practice is done. When you are linking to a site other than your own, you want the user to keep his/her own place in your site, otherwise you might lose that visitor. In fact, Help2Go's links to external sites all open up in a new window (shame on me!)

Firefox has a way around this, however, and it is one of my favorite features:

In Firefox, click on the Tools menu and choose Options.
In the Options box, choose Tabs.
Check the box next to "Force links that open new windows to open in:"
Choose the "a new tab" option.
Then hit OK.

From now on, all sites that open links in new windows will open up in a new tab instead. It's also handy for sites that open up a pop-up window - many times these pop-up windows will be in tabs as well. It makes for a much less annoying browsing experience!

Discuss this article: Firefox: Open in new tab Discussion

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