What happens: new window instead of tab, or result opens in the same tab?

Thank you for your replies so very quickly. I didn't realize that Firefox was not up to date and I had version 3.62 something. I have done a clean remove and a new install with Firefox version 7. Unfortunately, I still have the same problem. When I search in Google and open a link it just replaces the Google window with the info from the selected link. I have setup my search options in Google to Open search results in a new browser window. I have the tabbed option setup correctly in Firefox but it will still not open a tab for links selected in Google's search results it only replaces the same tab.

I have added pictures of my tab options in Firefox and my Google preferences. I have done a little more research and it seems the issue is only with the Google search results. When you click on the Google Search results it replaces the current tab with the results instead of going to a new tab.

Thank you for your replies so very quickly. I didn't realize that Firefox was not up to date and I had version 3.62 something. I have done a clean remove and a new install with Firefox version 7. Unfortunately, I still have the same problem. When I search in Google and open a link it just replaces the Google window with the info from the selected link. I have setup my search options in Google to Open search results in a new browser window. I have the tabbed option setup correctly in Firefox but it will still not open a tab for links selected in Google's search results it only replaces the same tab.

Could you check something? When you are viewing your Google results, can you check whether the links have the correct "target" specified. One way to do this is as follows:

Press Ctrl+Shift+k to display the Web Console.

In the command area (after the > symbol), paste the following and press Enter:

alert(document.querySelector("#res h3 a").getAttribute("target"));

I am expecting that you will get a dialog saying _blank instead of null. If it says null, then either Google is not serving the page correctly, or something is stripping the target attribute from the links.

(You can close the Web Console by pressing Ctrl+Shift+k again.)

If the correct target is there, are you running any add-ons that might try to disable Google's tracking? When you click a link, you may have noticed that rather than send you directly to the site, Google intercepts the click by sending you through another Google page. An add-on might be bypassing that without also checking the target.

I did get _blank as you said. The picture is attached.

I am not sure about the add-on. I attached two screen shots - One is the Extensions and one is the Plugins I have installed. One plugin at the top of the page is not shown and is the Adobe Acrobat plugin.

The only extension I have is the tabs utility. I just installed this one to see if it would help fix my issue but it didn't, so I will remove it.

When I click on one of the Google search results links, it loads the web page but it also replaces the Google search results. This is a pain because I now have to use the back button to go back to the Google search results instead of just changing the tab. This behavior started right after Firefox updated itself to 3.6.23 three days or so ago. It use to work just fine.

I just did a clean install of Firefox 7 and the results are still the same. I uninstalled Firefox 3.6.23 and removed all the Firefox directories. I used WinASO to clean the registry and then went manual through the registry deleting all keys related to Firefox. I then rebooted and installed Firefox 7. After all that, the results are still the same. This is driving me crazy. I really appreciate all your help.

I have come across this same behavior, though I noticed it in the links at the top bar of Gmail (where you have Calendar, Documents, +You, etc.) The behavior expected (and always) was that upon clicking on one of those links would open a new tab with the desired google tool. Same as it happened to you, in FF 7 it started replacing the current tab. Searched around with no success, until I reahed this post.

The only way to fix this was to open the Options / Tabs, disabled all the options, then I restarted Firefox. By doing that completely disabled tabbed browsing. After FF restarted I re-enabled just "Open new windows in new tab instead", "Always show the tabbar" and "When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately". Done! Links in google tools started to open in new tabs as expected.

It seems to me the default settings that come out of the box in FF7, may not match what is marked in the Options. Resetting them solved the problem for me. Hope this helps! :) -- Miguel.

@JoeColburn wrote: The only extension I have is the tabs utility.
Since the problem involves tabs, did you try disabling that extension?

Thank you all for your replies. I have actually received my new Alienware laptop yesterday and Firefox works perfectly on this machine. For whatever reason the suggestion mmmattos, Miguel, had actually worked for me too.

What would we all do without message boards to share the knowledge. The best technical support for anything you could think of is to be found on the internet.