Search Engine Tab Question

Good Morning All!

I have a goofy question that certainly is not life critical. Rather, it is merely one of those "How did I do that?" questions.

On my MacBook Pro (2007 model) running OSX 10.6.8, I have two user profiles. When I am on Profile One and am using either Safari or Firefox, I can do a search using the Search Box. When the results page opens, if I click any link on the list, a new tab opens and the browser switches to that tab.

For example, if I search for "Most Helpful Mac Forum", one of the items in the list will be mac-forums.com. If I click on it, a new tab opens on this group's page. No Command Key-Click is needed.

This works is both Safari and Firefox. The search engines used are Yahoo and Metacrawler (Now called 'Zoo') It does not work with Google or Dogpile.

My conundrum is that it only works with User Profile One, not User Profile Two.
I have checked all the Preference settings & settings for the browsers on both profiles and they match.

Command-Click works in both, but I'm wondering how the heck I managed to make it automatic in the one profile. Any clues?

I don't remember the exact wording but check Safari preferences carefully. In the tabs section try checking the option "When a new tab/window opens make it active" I also have the "Open pages in tabs instead of windows" setting set to "Always".

Thank You Slydude for your good hints.

In both of my profiles, the settings for Safari are the same as you mentioned. I'm starting to wonder if whatever does the automatic tab is a somehow set in the search engine?

Boy, Did I Goof....

After reading your ideas Slydude, I decided to goof around with settings and search engine choices. I discovered something that I did not notice before (and should have noticed).

I had Profile One using Metacrawler (Zoo) in Firefox and Yahoo in Safari.
I had Profile Two using Yahoo in Firefox and Metacrawler in Safari
I never noticed that I had them reversed. What a dope!

In Safari, only Yahoo will open clicked links in new tabs. Metacrawler (Zoo) will not, nor will any of the other engines I tried.

In Firefox, only Metacrawler (Zoo) will open clicked links in new tabs. Yahoo will not, nor will any of the other engines I tried.

It works this way in both user profiles.

It seems that the click-tab feature is not only search engine dependent, but browser dependent as well.