Here’s a routine for me and some of my Firefoxer friends before we learned about opening display search results in a new tab – Ctrl + T (open an new tab) -> Click on the search field -> Enter search terms -> Hit enter. That’s before we found out that hitting Alt + Enter or Alt + Left Click on the Search Bar Go button would automatically open search results in a new tab. *slaps forehead*

In any case, here’s a more geeky approach – a tweak to minimize keystrokes.

• Access the about:config page.
• Find the browser.search.openintab preference name
• Double-click on it to change the value to true
• The changes take effect instantly

Simply hitting Enter after keying in search terms will now open results in a new tab. Note that after you’ve performed this tweak, Alt + Left Click becomes Ctrl + Left Click.