In order to open a link in a specific pane, you have to drag the link to the title bar of that pane. This requires careful aim, and I can think of two ways to improve this so it can be faster:
- Add an “Open in last selected pane” to the right-click menu for links, maybe right after “Open in new pane”
- When dragging a link over an existing pane, add an alt- or shift-clicking functionality that opens the link in that pane rather than dropping the link into that pane’s text.
Solves a similar problem as noted here Open in a new pane (with ctrl/cmd-click) should be open in the "other" pane