You may have additional options by "right clicking" on the link. Try it out and let us know.

The choices I get are new tab, new window, private window. Or bookmark, copy, save, send to device, search DuckDuckGo, or inspect things. I would like to be able to make a setting so that a plain left click will open the link in a new window - just as it once did. I'm opening and closing dozens of links in a session. It's easy to forget to right click, which lands me with a new tab, and as after a long time of closing at top right I end up having to reload the parent page again, or clearing a warning and then finding the tab closer. Would it be impossible for an option to be given for this setting, or is it regarded as too old fashioned? Not all users are in their 20s and have never heard of Netscape and Altavista. (PS I use a Mac on occasions, and still can't get used to the traffic lights at top left...)

Hi StPhil, if a website has coded a link to open in a new window, then by default, Firefox will divert it to a new tab instead. There is a checkbox for this on the Options page:

• Windows: "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Options
• Mac: "3-bar" menu button (or Firefox menu) > Preferences
• Linux: "3-bar" menu button (or Edit menu) > Preferences
• Any system: type or paste about:preferences into the address bar and press Enter/Return to load it

The second section on the General panel is Tabs and there you can uncheck the box for "Open links in tabs instead of new windows".

Does that work on yours?

I unclicked that when setting up on Win 10. (Just as when I get a new phone, I sit down and spend half an hour deleting or disabling apps...) I also unclicked the one above it as I do not use tabs except where forced to, such as using the Options window. I sometimes want to close a window very quickly, and the close window X is far easier to hit at speed than the tab ones - which don't light up red either. It's easy to hit the + instead of the X with tabs, and I don't want a new tab. I don't really want ANY tab. I know a lot of people seem to like them, or very possibly are not complainers but just suffer things. I'm a complainer. It may well be a difference between the display on XP and on Win 10. I know that fonts are different within the same site (fancier, but harder on the eye). I'll just have to right click all the time.

That setting handles the case of links coded to open in a new window and what Firefox does with them: allow a new window or divert to a new tab instead. If it's not working as expected -- I hate to sound like a cliché but... -- could you try checking and unchecking the box a couple times (turning it off and on again)?

On some sites there is a setting to code the links to open in a new window. For example, in Google results, you can set that here: https://www.google.com/preferences

For links coded to open in the same tab on sites where you don't have that option, you can Shift+click to direct them to a new window instead of opening in the same tab.

And finally, to automate things, you would need an add-on. I don't know whether there is one for new windows instead of new tabs.

Oh, speaking of add-ons, I have this old one you could look at. Any new tab that opens, the extension pops it off to a new window. (This breaks Customize, though. I need to figure out how to make an exception.)

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/i-hate-tabs-sdi-for-firefox/