Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Tab focus behavior when searching selected text

  • 2 respostas
  • 26 have this problem
  • 9 views
  • Last reply by bob2844

more options

In the previous versions of Firefox, when I selected some text on a webpage, right-clicked the text to get the context menu, and clicked the "Search" option (e.g. Search Google for "my text selection") the currently focused tab would stay focused and a new tab would be launched to handle the appropriate search in the background. Ever since I updated to Firefox 13, the new tab now receives focus when I do a search on selected text.

How can I switch back to the old behavior? This change in functionality is driving me crazy. When reading a webpage, I often like to select words and phrases about which I want to learn more and launch searches to Google and/or Wikipedia via the context menu. I almost always like to finish reading the current page before going off to read the new tabs. Even if I did intend to stop reading the current page and go to the new tab, it often takes many seconds for the new tab to load and I would rather keep reading the current page and switch to the new tab manually than stare at a blank tab while I wait for it to load.

In the "Tabs" tab of the options window, there is a checkbox for "When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately." Is there anything like this for new tabs launched by a context menu search?

Thanks!

In the previous versions of Firefox, when I selected some text on a webpage, right-clicked the text to get the context menu, and clicked the "Search" option (e.g. Search Google for "my text selection") the currently focused tab would stay focused and a new tab would be launched to handle the appropriate search in the background. Ever since I updated to Firefox 13, the new tab now receives focus when I do a search on selected text. How can I switch back to the old behavior? This change in functionality is driving me crazy. When reading a webpage, I often like to select words and phrases about which I want to learn more and launch searches to Google and/or Wikipedia via the context menu. I almost always like to finish reading the current page before going off to read the new tabs. Even if I did intend to stop reading the current page and go to the new tab, it often takes many seconds for the new tab to load and I would rather keep reading the current page and switch to the new tab manually than stare at a blank tab while I wait for it to load. In the "Tabs" tab of the options window, there is a checkbox for "When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately." Is there anything like this for new tabs launched by a context menu search? Thanks!

Chosen solution

hey bob, you can enter about:config into the location bar of firefox, confirm the info notification (in case it shows up), search for the preference named browser.search.context.loadInBackground & toggle it to true by double-clicking it. that should bring back the old behaviour...

Ler a resposta no contexto 👍 20

All Replies (2)

more options

Chosen Solution

hey bob, you can enter about:config into the location bar of firefox, confirm the info notification (in case it shows up), search for the preference named browser.search.context.loadInBackground & toggle it to true by double-clicking it. that should bring back the old behaviour...

more options

Thanks, that did the job. It seems odd though that there is no way to toggle this behavior in the options window.