window.open in a new tab

In some automation testing I need to use window.open() to open new tabs rather than completely new browser windows. To do this in Internet Explorer 7, you can set the registry key DWORD name 'PopupsUseNewWindow' to a value of 2 in the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\TabbedBrowsing

This has an equivalent UI setting - open IE Tools, Options. In the General tab, click Settings near the bottom next to 'Tabs'. At the bottom there's some settings for 'Open links from other programs in:'. The value 2 is equivalent to the second choice - 'A new tab in the current window'.

In Firefox, you can get the same result by calling window.open with _new, which doesn't work in IE.