On Windows press Alt + D then Shift + Enter

On Mac press Command + L then Shift + Enter.

Alt + D or Command + L to select the URL. Shift + Enter to open the URL in a new window.

First off, if you have a default_popup defined in the manifest - you need to remove it, as it interferes with the click event you want to catch.

Then, you need to catch the event in a background script:

chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function(tab) {
  // ...
});

Next, if we want a window, we probably want to look at the windows API. create() sounds like what you need:

chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function(tab) {
  chrome.windows.create({/* options */});
});

What options do you need? Assuming you want to open a page from your extension, you'll need an URL wrapped in a chrome.runtime.getURL:

chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function(tab) {
  chrome.windows.create({
    // Just use the full URL if you need to open an external page
    url: chrome.runtime.getURL("mypage.html")
  });
});

Then, to show a window like you're showing, without top toolbar, you need a window type "popup":

chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function(tab) {
  chrome.windows.create({
    url: chrome.runtime.getURL("mypage.html"),
    type: "popup"
  });
});

Finally, if you want to do something after the window has opened, use the callback:

chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function(tab) {
  chrome.windows.create({
    url: chrome.runtime.getURL("mypage.html"),
    type: "popup"
  }, function(win) {
    // win represents the Window object from windows API
    // Do something after opening
  });
});

I believe that chrome does not allow the popups to open an external page by any way. The only solution I know is to place an iframe in your popup.html file with src attribute set to popup2.html and place all your html inside popup2.html. However, consider that all websites do not work well inside iframe.

If you are trying to open url in currently active tab then try following:

Attach following script to your popup.html file:

var hrefs = document.getElementsByTagName("a");

function openLink() {
    var href = this.href;
    chrome.tabs.query({active: true, currentWindow: true}, function(tabs) {
        var tab = tabs[0];
        chrome.tabs.update(tab.id, {url: href});
    });
}

for (var i=0,a; a=hrefs[i]; ++i) {
    hrefs[i].addEventListener('click', openLink);
}

You need to add tabs permisson to your manifest file for this to work.

The problem is that you are violating manifest version 2's content security policy. To fix it all you have to do is get rid of inline script, in this case your background page. Turn it into a background script like this:

manifest.json

"background":{
  "scripts": ["background.js"]
},

background.js

chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function(activeTab){
  var newURL = "http://stackoverflow.com/";
  chrome.tabs.create({ url: newURL });
});

If, for some reason, you do need it to be a page, then simply include the script as an external file and declare it as a page like before.

There are two possible ways to achieve this:

1 - When the new tab open it will always opens in the chrome window which is last active or last minimized, means you have to open two chrome's window and always have to active the window in which you want to have your new tabs to open.

2 - You have to install different browser so that you don't have to care the active chrome's window.

That's all you can do.

You can try to add Open in specific window which is an extension that:

Adds a right-click menu that opens a link in a specified window

To open a link to a another opened window, right-click on the link, click on Open in specific window, then select the window that should host it.

If you have multiple chrome windows open, this extension will add a right-click menu allowing you to choose which window to open the link in.

The menu will automatically show the current window/tab title of the windows you can choose to open the link in. Optionally you can also name your open windows by clicking the "Open in specific window" icon in the upper right-hand corner.

Caveats: Reading the reviews, it seems that the although you might name your windows, the names are not retained after restarting the machine. Also Alt+Click is not working.

Listen to chrome.windows.onCreated event, when right clicking chrome tray icon, a new window would be launched, then you could create a new tab in the event handler.

chrome.windows.onCreated.addListener(function(window) {
    chrome.windows.getAll(function(windows) {
        if (windows.length === 1) {           
            chrome.tabs.create({windowId: window.id, url: "chrome://newtab"});
        }
    });
});

Problem

For Linux, if you have multiple VNC servers, this same problem will occur.
That is,

$ google-chrome
Created new window in existing browser session

And no google chrome window will appear in the current X VNC session (a new tab will appear in the X session with the first instance of google-chrome).

Solution

A simple workaround is to run

$ google-chrome "--user-data-dir=${HOME}/.google-chrome/session${DISPLAY}"

This sets a unique user directory based on the X VNC instance in use. The user directory will be created as needed. The new google-chrome process will display within the current X VNC session.

Tested using Google Chrome version 22 on Ubuntu 12.04.

Yes, a popup page is just a normal extension page, you can do the following to open a new popup tab from the background page. I use that every time when the user first installs the extension, I open the about page, you can do the same for the popup page.

chrome.tabs.create({url: 'popup.html'}) 

For one of my extensions, My Hangouts, I have a small "open as tab" button within the popup, I bind the click event for that link to execute this:

chrome.tabs.create({url: chrome.extension.getURL('popup.html#window')});

The reason why I passed the hash is because I wanted to add more content when the user opens it in a popup because there is more real estate to play with.

Within the popup, I use normal JavaScript to differentiate whether I opened the tab in the new tab page or in a normal page like the following:

if (window.location.hash == '#window') {
  this.displayAsTab = true;
}

You can do tricks like this to make your extensions user experience better.