On Bugzilla today, I needed to move between two bugs, but there was no link between them. I used the Find button to access the second page, so neither page had a link to the other. I am so familiar with Ctrl+clicking now to open new tabs that I actually tried Ctrl+Back to try to load the previous page, but it only performed the usual clicking behavior. It would be nice to add a Ctrl+click handler to open in a new tab for both the Back and Forward navigation buttons. I would suggest the same idea extend to Reload as well, if it is not already assigned (Is it Shift-Reload?). If this is done, it would be worth examining similar behaviors for the "Link/Navigation Toolbar", the Personal Toolbar, the throbber, and any other UI that opens a page in the current browser window.

interesting, but perhaps UID should comment.

Bug 121733 could prevent the generalized form of this request in the Sidebar, Manage Bookmarks, and the Find Bookmarks windows.

Dup of bug 75731, "[RFE] Middle click to open in new window should work on back and forward buttons", one of the cases of bug 70501, "Middle+clicking and ctrl+clicking should work in more places". 75731 also applies to ctrl+click (see bug 70501), and would follow your pref setting for whether middle+click and ctrl+click open tabs or windows (see bug 70501 comment 8). *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 75731 ***