Comment 72 for bug 481541

(In reply to comment #20)
> (In reply to comment #19)
> > browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground can be set to true in about:config to
> > achieve this. This is a pref that doesn't need UI, either, so I'm not sure
> > what the point is, exactly.
>
> The point is that it is there and it is useful - I like being able to load
> external URIs into the browser without stealing focus from my current tab. What
> I don't like is that the window itself is raised every time; Firefox never used
> to do this, and many people attributed the loss of this behaviour to changes to
> TBP.

Right, but if we have that option as a hidden pref, and we're not going to expose UI for it, what's remaining here? You want the option to not steal access from the current tab, which we have.

Selecting the current tab without bringing the window forward would require allowing focus to happen when the window was brought forward, not when the focus() call happens. Really a bug should be filed in core to explore supporting something like this, and we can revisit adding this behaviour to tabbrowser as an option. I don't see the utility of that particular config, in the general case.