Have you tried Tab Mix Plus? It has a feature where you can specify if new links are opened in new tabs or the same one. Plus I've used a million times their feature that restores a closed tab that I didn't mean to close, with a button on the toolbar.
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1122/
That sounds great! I think I'll wait to install it until after 2.0 comes out, but it looks like it's the solution to my one complaint about Firefox.