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How can click a link and load it in the background?

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How can I click on a link in Thunderbird and have it load in the background instead of focus switching to my browser? In Mail.app, I just Command-click to load in the background, but I haven't found a key combo or menu option to do this in Thunderbird. Thanks.

How can I click on a link in Thunderbird and have it load in the background instead of focus switching to my browser? In Mail.app, I just Command-click to load in the background, but I haven't found a key combo or menu option to do this in Thunderbird. Thanks.

All Replies (6)

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In windows I use Ctrl+ Click.

Command click is the mac equivalent to right click, so that is not going to work and for reasons best known to apple ctrl+ Click and command + Click amount to the same thing. Got to love that decision to stick with a one button mouse and the repercussions for your users base of same.

This might or might not help. I really do not know as I avoid apple stuff like the plague, so my last us of an apple desktop was on a black and white screen. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/118276/disable-system-wide-ctrl-click-as-right-click-in-mavericks

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This has nothing to do with various clicks. It has to do with Thunderbird. People on Linux are complaining about the same thing: looking for a way not to switch focus when clicking on a link. I was just pointing out that Mail.app allows you to do this with a modifier key.

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Thunderbird is just calling the default browser. It is the browser which is opening with focus. Try setting your browser to open links in background.

EG: If Firefox

  • In address bar type: about:config
  • agree to accept risk
  • In top search type: Divert
  • look for this line: ‘browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground'
  • double click on that line to change value from false to true.
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Toad-Hall said

Thunderbird is just calling the default browser. It is the browser which is opening with focus. Try setting your browser to open links in background. EG: If Firefox
  • In address bar type: about:config
  • agree to accept risk
  • In top search type: Divert
  • look for this line: ‘browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground'
  • double click on that line to change value from false to true.

I don't see how it can be a Firefox problem. Besides, I have tried the suggestion that you have suggested and it does not remedy the problem.

Also, recently I was using the Vienna (Vienna.app) MacOS app for my RSS feeds and it actually did give the user the ability to open links in a browser in the background. It works with Firefox, without having to make any adjustments to Firefox. It opened all my links in Firefox and when I was finished with Vienna, I simply went to Firefox and all my tabs were there that i had opened with Vienna. I do not see why Thunderbird could not adopt this functionality and also open links in the background without losing focus away from Thunderbird.

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Exactly, Dean. This has nothing to do with the browser. Even if I could, I wouldn't want to set my browser to always open links in the background. It depends what I'm doing. Thunderbird, like all other mail user agents (and RSS readers), should give us the choice at time of clicking (typically, with a modifier key).

Okulungisiwe ngu TokyoJimu

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Does Apple have any developer documentation on how to do this? For example, a third party application like Thunderbird might:

  • Send a parameter to MacOS that the URL should be opened by the application handling it in the background instead of taking focus
  • Immediately give itself focus after sending the URL to MacOS

My search wasn't successful.