In Mozilla Firefox the Search Bar is the text bar found in the top right corner of the window. Using Firefox’s Search bar, you can use the most popular search engines without having to visit their websites. When you enter a term in the Search bar, the indicated search engine is queried, and the search results are displayed in Firefox. In the Navigation toolbar, the Search bar is displayed in the far right corner.

Firefox Search Bar

When you search using the search bar, by default the results are displayed in the current tab. You may however find that you don’t want the search to interfere with your current tab, but would prefer the search results to be displayed in a new tab.

This option doesn’t appear in the standard Tools and Options so we’re going to edit some hidden firefox preferences. To do this open the Mozilla Firefox browser and enter about:config into the url bar at the top of the screen, then press enter.

If this is the first time you have been to these preferences you will receive a security warning promting you before going further – aslong as you promise to be careful you can continue!

Lots of options… lets make use of the filter provided to find the right one. You should see a flashing indicator in a textfield called Filter: at the top of your screen. Type search.open into the Filter: textfield and that should narrow us down to just the one option as show below.

Firefox Search Bar Options

Double clicking the field will change its value. By default the value is set to False.

Selecting one of the following values will provide the following behaviour…

• False: Open search box results in the existing tab (default)
• True: Open search box results in a new tab

Choose the option which is right for you and then close the about:config tab.