Possibly a result of using a different home page, I use my own home page and have not seen any difference in regards links opening within the same tab, another tab, or another window in conversion from Firefox 3.6.17 to Firefox 4.0.1

Generally you would have your Tools > Options > Tabs set up to open New Windows in New Tabs instead. You would have Google open links in a New Window which equates then to a new tab (but the same new tab each time).

You can change your settings for Google searches at the top of a Google search results page "Search Settings". Stored in cookies or at Google, you may have to set up separately for logged in and not logged in to Google.

Did you have extensions to work with Google, they may not work anymore, check them out carefully. "Google Optimizer", "Optimize Google" both no good to me, but I can use "Google Enhancer" and "Adblock Plus" to do what those did for me.

These are options for Tabs that I have that differ from the default,

• |browser.tabs.closeButtons| 3|
• |browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab| false|
• |browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent| false|
• |browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace| false|
• |browser.tabs.loadGroup| 0|
• |browser.tabs.loadInBackground| false|
• |browser.tabs.loadOnNewTab| 1|
• |browser.tabs.openinnewtab| true
• |browser.tabs.tabClipWidth| 5|
• |browser.tabs.tabMinWidth| 0|

you can check them out in

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config_entries and in
• http://dmcritchie.mvps.org/firefox/tabs_config.htm

Thanks for your reply, which I must admit is a bit complicated for me. I have the Firefox and Google settings as you suggest in the second paragraph. I don't have the Google extensions you mention. You list Tabs options different from the default. Where do I find those, and how easy is it for a less experienced user to set them up? Thanks for your help.

Question: "You list Tabs options different from the default. Where do I find those, and how easy is it for a less experienced user to set them up? Thanks for your help."

Type about:config into the location bar and in the filter row enter browser.tabs. -- the process is described in the article about:config. Most of these configuration variables would be described in the link for about:config entries.

You can toggle a true/false setting with double-click on the row, but you can always modify a setting by right-clicking on the row and choosing "Modify". If the variable does not exist you can create it and will be asked to choose the type: if for true or false it would be "Boolean" (uses binary logic), if it is a number it would be "integer", if characters it would be a "string".

Since this was about differences between default and what your or I have one of the choices on the context menu (right-click menu) is "reset" to restore the default value. No matter how you change a value you should look it up in about:config entries link or in a search of http://www.mozillazine.org/ itself if not shown for an understanding of the settings.

If you sort a column of the about:config list for instance "Status" (user/default), the secondary sort will be name in ascending alphabetical order.

The list of changed variables that I included was copied and pasted from a portion of the about:support page (HELP menu > Troubleshooting information...) then look for topic "Modified Preferences".

I have the same issue. I recently installed Firefox 4.0.1 over 3.6. Now the web links in a Google Search page will not work when my Google Search settings are set to open in a new window. Nor do they work in other web pages that are supposed to open a new window. When I click on these links, nothing happens. I'm currently using a right-click context menu option or, when I remember, CTRL / left-click to open pages in a new tab.

I did an about:config search for the options you listed above. Five of the options are not in my about:config:

• browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace
• browser.tabs.loadGroup
• browser.tabs.loadOnNewTab
• browser.tabs.openinnewtab
• browser.tabs.tabMinWidth

I assume that one or two of the above missing options are needed to load a new page into a tab. Is it possible to add these missing options to the about:config file?

Those prefs are no longer supported in current Firefox 4.0+ versions, so it won't help if you would add them.

Since "open in new tab" does not work either in Google or in Firefox 4, would it be best to reinstall Firefox 3.6? If I did that, would I lose all my current settings? (With Firefox 4 and the new Google toolbar, I also lost my credit card info in Google auto-fill and can't see a way to replace it.) Thanks.

For the Google website you can set your preferences on the Google.com page via the gear icon (click > Search settings) at the top right.

Results Window: Open search results in a new browser window.

You can open any link in a new tab with a middle-click