Open a new tab in the background?

Question

Using javascript, I want to open a new page in a different tab, but remain focused on the current tab. I know I can do it like this:

open('http://example.com/'); focus(); 

However, when I do this in chrome, it flashes the new tab for a moment before switching back to the current tab. I want to avoid this.

The application is a personal bookmarklet, so it only has to work in the latest Chrome.

Answer 1

UPDATE: By version 41 of Google Chrome, initMouseEvent seemed to have a changed behavior, and so this answer no longer works. Thanks to @Daniel Andersson for his comment.

this can be done by simulating ctrl + click (or any other key/event combinations that open a background tab) on a dynamically generated a element with its href attribute set to the desired url

In action: fiddle

function openNewBackgroundTab(){     var a = document.createElement("a");     a.href = "http://www.google.com/";     var evt = document.createEvent("MouseEvents");     //the tenth parameter of initMouseEvent sets ctrl key     evt.initMouseEvent("click", true, true, window, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,                                 true, false, false, false, 0, null);     a.dispatchEvent(evt); } 

tested only on chrome

Answer 2

THX for this question! Works good for me on all popular browsers:

function openNewBackgroundTab(){     var a = document.createElement("a");     a.href = window.location.pathname;     var evt = document.createEvent("MouseEvents");     //the tenth parameter of initMouseEvent sets ctrl key     evt.initMouseEvent("click", true, true, window, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,                                 true, false, false, false, 0, null);     a.dispatchEvent(evt); }  var is_chrome = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('chrome') > -1; if(!is_chrome) {     var url = window.location.pathname;     var win = window.open(url, '_blank'); } else {     openNewBackgroundTab(); }