Do you mean Ctrl+left click or just plain left click? I think a plain left click always navigates immediately whether the page opens in the same tab, new window, or new tab. What behavior did you have before, if it was different?

You can use a middle click to open the link in a new tab and press the Shift key in addition to toggle loading in the background.

• Tools > Options > Tabs: "When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately"

sorry jscher2000, I didn't describe my problem very well. When I left click a link, say in some search results, FF opens a new tab and switches to it immediately. The normal behavior is to open the link in the current tab, and there is no option to change this setting. If I right click the link and select "open link in new tab", FF behaves normally, according to whatever I have set in Tools > Options > Tabs: "When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately" . Bit more experimenting,

When I deselect: Tools > Options > Tabs: "Open new windows in a new tab instead", left clicking a link now opens a new window and switches to it immediately. 

Interestingly this strange behavior does not happen on these mozillla pages.

Edit. OK so I narrowed it down to my search engine. Doesn't happen in Google. Only happens when I use my search homepage (au.search.yahoo.com). Look like it might be a job for hijackthis.

That may be a setting of the Yahoo site.

Google has something similar in the Google Search Setting that you can open via the gear icon on the Google results page.

• http://www.google.com/preferences?hl=en
• Results Window: Open search results in a new browser window.

Yep you are right cor-el, just checked and it does have that setting. It was never there before though, and never was problem. Ma be they changed the default settings. Anyway decide to do away with it and go back to the the firefox default homepage which uses google. I had a thing against google and decided to not use it anymore, but here I am back again.