227314 - New Hotmail code removes the ability to open new tabs easily from within Hotmail

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 138198

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Paul Shuttle]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6a) Gecko/20031027 Firebird/0.7+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6a) Gecko/20031027 Firebird/0.7+

In the previous version of Hotmail (i.e. before a few days ago), links in
e-mails opened up in a new tab as normal, via the mouse wheel button. In the new
revision (i.e. NOW), this is no longer possible, and clicking the middle mouse
button on any e-mail link does nothing. Links can still be opened by right
clicking -> Open Link in New Tab, but this is obviously an inconvenience.

There's a thread about this issue over at the MozillaZine forums here:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=283694

I'm not sure if there's anything that can be done to fix this, but here's
hoping. Going by that thread, it appears to happen in all Firebird releases, and
I don't see anything which mentions this is a Windows only problem.
Unfortunately I don't have Linux installed to check.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Log in to an e-mail account on www.hotmail.com
2. Open an e-mail with a link
3. Try and open the link into a new tab using the middle mouse button

Actual Results:  
Nothing happens.

Expected Results:  
Opened the link into a new tab.

Comment 1

[Paul Shuttle]

Additional: This also appears to be the case for any links from within the
Hotmail system - So even opening e-mails themselves in tabs is made impossible,
unless you use the aforementioned workaround.

Comment 2

[Colin Ramsay]

This isn't really a bug, more of an enhancement request. It's a Javascript
issue. Rather than providing a proper web address on an href, Hotmail now uses
onclick events to call a JS function.

Comment 3

[Alfonso Martinez]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 138198 ***