Browser issue with preloader & geturl

I’m have two issues with a new version of my site that’s almost complete. First is probably an easy one which is the geturl command. It always opens the links I click on in IE. I would like it to use the default browser.

link_1.onRelease = function(){
getURL(“http://www.naturalropehalters.com/”, “_blank”);
};

The second issue I am having is with my preloader. It works fine in IE but just stops in Firefox. I had this issue before with an older version of the site so I changed the preloader two 2 frames instead of 3 and it worked but I lost my percentage info and just had an animation.

Here is the code which is taken from the Kirupa Advanced Preloader Tutorial.

Frame : 1

loaded_bytes = Math.round(_root.getBytesLoaded());
loaded_total = Math.round(_root.getBytesTotal());
total_percent = (loaded_bytes/loaded_total)100;
_root.loaded_text = Math.round(total_percent);
startpoint = bar._x
_root.text._x = startpoint + (_root.bar._currentframe
2.25);

Frame : 2

gotoAndPlay(1);

The code and components are all part of the main move clip and not seperate. It looks like Kirupa’s example works fine but my implementation doesn’t.