Opening the link on new tab?

In Firefox, a new tab opens when clicking a link, rather than link opening in SAME tab or window. Help ?

• For example, on MSN homepage (msn.com), I normally click on "Hotmail" and the hotmail sign-in screen appears in the same tab; thus, overriding the MSN homepage. Now, and ...show more

• Answer:

  OK, so you say you have checked your TAB options and have unchecked the "new tab" option, which leaves the problem with the HTML in the source page. Here is a typical line for a link: <td align="center" valign="middle"> <a href="http://www.msn.com" target="_blank" title="MSN"> <big> <b> MSN </b> </big> </a> </td> Normally, this would be on a single line instead of broken up as I have it here. I wanted to make sure Y!A did not obscure any of the tags. Note the "TARGET=" clause. The word following is the attribute. There are several options for the attribute as follows: _blank _parent _self _top framename Note that "_blank" is what opens a new tab in Firefox. If they used "_self", Firefox would have opened in the SAME tab as you would expect. Opening a new tab is actually a time saver. It is much quicker to close a tab than to use the BACK button to reload the previous page. IE does not have tabs, but opens a whole new window in this same event. Like I said, it all depends on how your browser interprets attributes and what attributes are actually used whether the browser opens a new window or tab or simply uses the same window over again. I always open a new tab whenever I can because it saves SO MUCH time to close a new tab or new window than to reload the previous page by using the BACK button. Try it sometime, timing with a stop watch which takes longer, closing a new tab or reloading the page using the back button. You can easily save a third of your time or more depending on the actual content of the page you reload. The BACK button does NOT make use of a stored page from your previous visit, but rather reloads the same page again as if it was the first time you got there. Bottom line, you have NO control over what the web page author uses in the attributes of the ANCHOR tag.