@concretable- the thing is, "coded" links aren't rendered as standard html hyperlinks so you may click on it as you wish but it will only be a selection as it will be rendered as normal text by the browser. So I have to lift my hand and use the finger to hold ctrl key to open it in a new tab.
About the pop-ups I am using ublock origin along with Popup Blocker (strict) by Jermy-Schomery on Opera (Win8.1 Pro x64)
And have enabled "Do not allow any sites to show pop-ups" in the settings. But still its not effective, so I suggest Opera gives an option to disable all pop-ups out of the box, at least for advanced users.