I don't think there is a setting for that, although, I'm often surprised to hear about new settings in Firefox...

What do you think about this workflow:

• Ctrl+e to focus the search bar
• When you submit the search, the results page opens automatically in a new tab

This is the setting you would change for that:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste sea and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.search.openintab preference to switch it from false to true

Note: after this change, the behavior of Alt+Enter flips. Normally, Alt+Enter in the search bar sends the search to a new tab, but with this setting, it sends the search to the same tab.

Thanks for the tip, I don't think that would work for me, though, to be honest :(

But... wasn't putting focus on the search bar the default behavior in older versions of Firefox? Either I'm going crazy, but I could swear that whenever I opened a new tab, I could start typing into the search bar by default in the past and I'm not talking about having the URL bar work as a search, I'm familiar with that.

Anyway, sorry to hear that this can't be changed, although if someone does know about some obscure option that would do it, I'm all ears :)

It wasn't the default, but maybe one of your add-ons had that as a feature? Maybe something comprehensive like Tab Mix Plus, Tab Utilities, etc.

Strange. I'm not using many plugins. In fact... only NoScript and then this "Google.com (in English)" add-on for the search bar to prevent having Google show me the local results as it would without it.

Idk, very weird. If it wasn't like this, then I have no clue why I'm suddenly noticing this behavior, I've been using Firefox for over a decade.

See also:

• Custom New Tab: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/custom-new-tab/
• Auto Cursor: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/auto-cursor/

jscher2000 was talking about extensions, not plugins.

Which "search bar"? The one to the right of the Location Bar (URL bar) on the Navigation Bar or the Search field in the New Tab page?

You can easily move the cursor via the Tab key on your keyboard. Once to the Search Bar and 3 'taps' on the Tab key to move the cursor to the Search field on the New Tab page.

Cor-el, thanks a lot, I'll look into these :)

The-edmeister - I mean the only search bar there is - the one on the right. There's no search field in the new tab page as there's no page when a new tab is opened. Yes, I can hit TAB, I can hit Ctrl+E, but I just don't want to ;)