How do I get Firefox's home page to open a new tab when searching?

Question

I'm slightly modifying Firefox's about:home page, and I'm trying to get the home page to effectively be its own app tab. In order to do that, I need to make it so that when I search with it, it opens a new tab to view my search results.
I've tried two things so far; I've tried adding the attribute '''target="_blank"''' to the '''<form>''' tag, and I've tried adding the attribute '''onclick="this.form.target='_blank';return true;"''' to the '''<input>''' tag nested inside of the '''<form>''' tag (I'm guessing the latter is JavaScript lol). I also tried an extension "TabSubmit" which didn't work here.
I know how to edit the right page (I'm changing the contents of aboutHome.xhtml in omni.ja), and have already edited the stylesheet slightly (to underline links when hovering over them and adjusting the fading of Mozilla's logo when hovering over it). This is the next change I wanted to make.
Any suggestions? Thanks!

Answer 1

The about:home uses window.location.href = url; to change the location of the current tab.
Changing this to window.open(url); and adding a line at the end of the aboutHome.js file to initialize localStorage works for me with a locally saved about:home page.
<pre><nowiki>function onSearchSubmit(aEvent)
let searchTerms = document.getElementById("searchText").value;
if (gSearchEngine && searchTerms.length > 0) {
const SEARCH_TOKENS = {
"_searchTerms_": encodeURIComponent(searchTerms)
let url = gSearchEngine.searchUrl;
for (let key in SEARCH_TOKENS) {
url = url.replace(key, SEARCH_TOKENS[key]);
window.open(url);
aEvent.preventDefault();
localStorage["search-engine"]="{\"name\":\"Google\",\"searchUrl\":\"http://www.google.com/search?q=_searchTerms_&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a\"}";</nowiki></pre>