Comment 18 for bug 389873

David Siegel, the primary function is to start a new document. It just so happens that it is opened in a new tab. The tab is secondary. This is where we disagree.

Starting something new is on Ctrl-N in the majority of programs, both in Gnome and on alternative platforms.

When Mozilla introduced tabs the shortcut Ctrl-N was taken for opening a new window. This was taken over from Netscape days. So bolted on tabs and took the free Ctrl-T shortcut.

Anyway, if you want to maximize consistency all across the board you have to leave «New document» at Ctrl-N. Almost all programs have a function for starting something new, and it is almost always on Ctrl-N. Only a fraction of programs even have tabs.

I think that is very convincing.