How to Open New Web Pages in a New Firefox Tab or Window

In the Firefox web browser, the default behavior is to open a new tab instead of opening a new window, as was the case before tabs became a mainstream feature. However, you may prefer to open web pages in a new window each time you click a link.

Disable Tabbed Browsing

Firefox makes it easy to revert this functionality so that links are opened in a new window in place of a tab. This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to modify this setting.

1. Open the Firefox browser.

2. Enter the about:preferences in the browser's address bar and press the Enter or Return key. The Firefox General preferences display. 

3. At the bottom of this screen, in the Tabs section, are four options, each accompanied by a check box.

4. The second, Open links in tabs instead of new windows, is enabled by default and instructs Firefox to always open new pages in a tab instead of a window. To disable this functionality and have new pages open in a separate browser window, remove the check mark next to this option by selecting it once.