Firefox 4

Upgrading to Firefox 4, I expected there to be a little pain, as I got used to any changes they made.

But whose bright idea was it to reverse the order of “Open in a new tab” and “Open in a new window” when you right click a link?

It is second nature to me to right-click and select the second item (open in a new tab); except now when I do that, it opens a new window.

Whereas some of the other changes are obviously part of making Firefox better, I can’t see how this change serves anyone, other than to confuse people.

6 Comments

  1. May 8, 2011
    Reply

    Maybe they put the most used option first? I hadn’t actually noticed the change, I tend to middle-button click or ctrl-click.

  2. May 9, 2011
    Reply

    I hadn’t noticed it at all – but then, I upgraded to Firefox 4 at about the same time as I made another major computer change, which is slowing me down a bit generally. I’d noticed “differences” but would have been hard-pressed to tell you what they were.

  3. May 9, 2011
    Reply

    I had exactly the same problem. I was beginning to wonder if I was imagining it.

  4. May 9, 2011
    Reply

    I tried Firefox 4, but there were too many things I disliked (I wasn’t too bothered about the buttons shifting, but breaking a load of addons — including the Flash downloader, which I use because running the embedded Flash viewer kills my CPU — was not acceptable). I hadn’t noticed the new window/tab swap, but I rarely use it so I probably didn’t get that far. As has become common, a lot of it looks like change for the sake of change (as happened with FF3).

  5. May 9, 2011
    Reply

    I couldn’t work out what had happened for a few seconds the first time – I’m slowly getting re-conditioned.

  6. May 9, 2011
    Reply

    Chromium (and presumably therfore Chrome) has the “open in a new tab” option at the top, which caught me out occasionally when I first tried it. I suppose the thinking is that, since the vast majority of users prefer opening things in new tabs to opening extra windows, that’s logically the top (and thus easiest to find) option. More a case of admitting they got it wrong first time, than rocking the boat for no reason.

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