Comment 19 for bug 481541

Danm,
I want to thank you for your work in getting better tab settings in Firefox. You
did an awesome job. I really never thought that the patch should go in as is,
just posted because of a request.

(In reply to comment #18)
> I'm unswayed by Grandmother Arguments about the undiscoverability of tabs
> loading in the background, because the user has to explicitly set them up to
> load in the background. The default is for new tabs to gain focus.

Actually, to the best of my knowledge, new tabs load in the background by
default (from firefox.js). This can be confusing behavior especially if the user
is not aware of how tabs exactly work.

Now that I have had time to think about it, I think there should really be 2-4
prefs here:

1) Whether to focus tabs from links explicitly chosen to open in tabs (this
would be middle clicking, "open in tab", and alt enter).
2) Whether to focus tabs from links explicitly chosen to open in tabs from
bookmarks and history. This could be rolled into 1 as both actions require a
middle click.
3) Whether to focus tabs opened by direct user action that results in a new tab
(this would be from left click or opened from external application).
4) Whether to focus tabs opened without user interaction (ie. timer based
pop-ups). This pref could be rolled up into 2, for now, as the user has to allow
the pop-up in the first place and I assume most users don't allow a lot of
pop-ups from timers.

For the short term, we could allow the generic open tab option to cover cases
3+4 and the bookmarks/history option to regulate case 2. Case 1 would be
available through about:config or extensions, as Unknown argued that most users
 will use middle click to open links they want to look at later, otherwise, they
can just use left click and the back button to transition between the two sites.
This isn't perfect, either, but it allows for users to have all links open
unfocused (as Bradley argued for) and I think it makes the most logical sense.
Personally, this makes me happy since I want 1+2 in the background, 3 in the
foreground, and 4 doesn't impact me. Furthermore, this matches the current
wording better since the new tab options and the old options use the terms
"opened from links" and "open links”. This also is in agreement with the
shortcut section of the Firefox Help files.