Oh I thought you could just right click on the picture and choose open link in new tab.
Only when it's an image element, not when it's a background image.
As for Firebug for FF, chrome has the javascript console which I've found immensely useful and similar to Firebug
I think Firebug was meant as a set of web developer tools similar to the WebKit console (which Chrome uses) for Firefox, which hadn't had its own complete set until Fx 11 (the current version).