Notably with
Firefox, you can configure a mouse button to open a link in a new tab. Typically I assign the middle mouse button (scroll wheel) to open in a new tab. In Chrome this is the default behavior (might be in Firefox too, it seems to change from time to time). I can (and often do) scan through a page clicking on all things of interest and then flip through the tabs. Chrome is nice because the tabs open adjacent to the source tab.