Chrome annoyance: opening a link in a new tab does not make it the current tab

One of the most common operations I do in a browser is to open a link in a new tab. In IE I simply use Ctrl+Click on a link and presto I see the linked-to Web page in a new tab. It almost works that way in Chrome, but unfortunately the new tabbed page is hidden behind the current page and you have to manually select the new tab, either by moving the mouse to the tab and clicking on it or by pressing Ctrl+Tab (go to next tab). How annoying! IE is actually easier to use than Chrome! Ha-ha!!!

Alright, there is another way to open that link that is slightly easier, but undocumented and still not as easy as IE: mouse over the link (or Tab to it) and press Ctrl+Shift+Click, and now the new tab is automatically (yeah, but only after I pressed that extra key, duh!!) the current tab.

In truth, this is not much of an issue for the average idiot user (who is sticking with IE 6 anyway!) who just does a bare click on the link to open the linked-to page in the same tab, but I am a little more of a power browser and tend to keep a lot of tabs open and bounce between them. The really annoying thing about this is that I cannot effortlessly switch between browsers.

For reference, here are the official Google Chrome keyboard shortcuts:

http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=95743

I would add a new entry to the Window and tab shortcuts section:

Ctrl+Shift and click a link

Open a link in a new tab and go to that tab

And while we are at it, you can get back to the tab containing the link by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Tab. And then you can flip back to the new tab again using Ctrl+Tab as described in the first paragraph.

I have a suspicion that the development of the Chrome keyboard shortcuts was sponsored by the American Association of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Surgeons. Yeah, I am kidding, but it would explain things.

-- Jack Krupansky