Helpful Tip: “Open in New Tab” Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard Bag When using your web browser there are a lot of things that you can do to speed up your efficiency and productivity, particularly when it comes to keyboard shortcuts. Thanks to a comment by Inferno_str1ke it struck me that some people may not realize the different ways you can make their browser open websites in a new tab. His comment sparked some “thank you’s” from other readers, and here’s what he had to say:

For about four months I was using the Google Toolbar search box exclusively, but now I’ve even dropped that in favour of keyword searches. I just hit Alt+D to jump to the URL box, type g,w,v,i,f for Google, Wikipedia, Google Video, Google Images and Facebook respectively, type a query and hit Enter or Alt+Enter if I want it in a new tab.

Did you know that in Firefox from the Address Bar or Search Box you can hit Alt+Enter to pull up the site in a new tab? We thought that this would be a good thing to share with all of our readers, and here’s a quick rundown of the various ways you can have sites open in a new tab for each of the different browsers:

–Firefox & Internet Explorer–

Ctrl+T – Open a new tab with a blank page loaded.
Alt+Enter – While in the Address Bar or Search Box this will open the requested site in a new tab.
Ctrl+Shift+Enter – When you’ve selected a link using the keyboard this shortcut will open the hyperlinked site in a new tab.
Ctrl+Enter – When you’ve selected a link using the keyboard this shortcut will open the hyperlinked site in a new tab in the background.
Ctrl+Shift+Click – When left-clicking on a link with the mouse hold down the Shift key to have the hyperlinked site open in a new tab.
Ctrl+Click – When left-clicking on a link with the mouse hold down the Ctrl+Shift keys to have the hyperlinked site open in a new tab in the background.

–Opera–

Ctrl+T – Open a new tab with Speed Dial loaded.
Shift+Enter – While in the Address Bar or Search Box this will open the requested site in a new tab.
Ctrl+Shift+Enter – While in the Address Bar or Search Box this will open the requested site in a new tab in the background.
Shift+Enter – When you’ve selected a link using the keyboard this shortcut will open the hyperlinked site in a new tab.
Ctrl+Shift+Enter – When you’ve selected a link using the keyboard this shortcut will open the hyperlinked site in a new tab in the background.
Shift+Click – When left-clicking on a link with the mouse hold down the Shift key to have the hyperlinked site open in a new tab.
Ctrl+Shift+Click – When left-clicking on a link with the mouse hold down the Ctrl+Shift keys to have the hyperlinked site open in a new tab in the background.

Hopefully we’ve saved you some time!

Related Posts:

Tags:

Firefox, Helpful Tips, Software, Browser, How To, Internet Explorer, Keyboard Shortcuts, Opera, Tips And Tricks

January 15th, 2008 Written by Ryan

AnonymousJanuary 15, 2008 at 4:32 pm

Ctrl + K – gets you to the search box

AnonymousJanuary 15, 2008 at 4:34 pm

and another alternative to alt + D is F6!

AnonymousJanuary 15, 2008 at 4:37 pm

ah and something else too
if you are selecting the search box clicking Ctrl + up or down arrow will scroll you through search engines you have

ResearchWizardJanuary 15, 2008 at 7:07 pm

“I just hit Alt+D to jump to the URL box, type g,w,v,i,f for Google, Wikipedia, Google Video, Google Images and Facebook respectively, type a query and hit Enter or Alt+Enter if I want it in a new tab.”

Opera
just hit F2 to open an URL box and type
the URL or
the search-key and searched-word (“g” for Google etc)
the alias of a bookmark (with Shift+F2 you don’t even need to hit Enter) – you can set the alias in the properties of bookmarks

create any search shortcut by right-click on the desired search-input-field + Create Search (I have we for English Wikipedia, wd for German Wikipedia, leo for leo.org English-German dictionary et al)

Shift (open in new tab) and CTRL+Shift (open in new background tab) work everywhere in the browser

Middle click (or mouse wheel click) on a link is an even faster way to open links in new background tabs (not only in Opera), while the link action could be customized in Tools-Preferences-Advanced-Shortcuts-Middle Click Options

there are tons of shortcuts and options already built into Opera and very mighty and easy possibilities to customize most of it

El_RAPAMay 10, 2011 at 11:07 pm
Thank you! I was looking for a mouse shortcut to “open in new tab”.

RyanAuthorJanuary 15, 2008 at 7:13 pm

Anonymous wrote:

Huh, that is pretty awesome as well. I think I’ll use that in a followup post.

@ResearchWizard: I did cover shortcuts in the article for Opera as well.

AnonymousJanuary 15, 2008 at 10:03 pm

I almost always want search results in a new tab. You can change the default so that the browser search box always opens results in a new tab and Alt+Enter opens in the same tab.

about:config

browser.search.openintab

change value to “true”

Inferno_str1keJanuary 16, 2008 at 1:28 pm

Thanks for the credit, not found many people who know about keyword searching, let alone how to open a URL in a new tab. Nice to see you spreading the word. I just hope that the keywords get synced to Weave along with everything else so eventually I can get my Firefox experience just how I like it from the moment I’ve installed the program.

RyanAuthorJanuary 16, 2008 at 7:30 pm

I almost always want search results in a new tab. You can change the default so that the browser search box always opens results in a new tab and Alt+Enter opens in the same tab.
about:config
browser.search.openintab
change value to “true”

That’s another good trick! Thanks.

Inferno_str1ke wrote:

I just hope that the keywords get synced to Weave along with everything else so eventually I can get my Firefox experience just how I like it from the moment I’ve installed the program.

That would be really nice to see, and I’m sure that the service is going to evolve quite well. I expect that most aspects of the user’s profile will eventually get synced.