Closed Bug 440707 Opened 16 years ago Closed 16 years ago

Center clicking on a non-link treats clipboard contents as a link in the current tab

Categories

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
General
Platform:
x86
Linux
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 135884

People

(Reporter: peng.thinkblue, Unassigned)

Details

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052912 Firefox/3.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052912 Firefox/3.0

Center clicking a link to open it in a new tab is a fantastic feature, but if you center click in Firefox 3 and don't have your mouse on a link the current tab is replaced with the result of clicking a link containing the contents of your clipboard.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Center click but don't have your mouse on top of a link (just off the link works as well as being completely away from any link
Actual Results:  
The tab's contents are replaced with a link consisting of the contents of your system clipboard

Expected Results:  
The link should have opened in a new tab, or at least a dialog should have popped up informing you that the selected link is in fact not a valid hyperlink

This has actually been an ongoing issue since early Firefox 3 betas and I've been meaning to report it. While annoying as hell it's not a major bug. I'm surprised it hasn't been reported yet, or at least I couldn't find a bug when I searched for it.
Mmm, a little tiny bit before Fx 3 betas: more like before 0.9, and I don't mean Firefox 0.9.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 16 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
Damn, it's been that long? I know I used to get an error popup before. Perhaps I'm thinking back to when I was a Windows user, but I'm surprised it still exists after a couple of years.
In fact, this is not a bug. It's meant to be a feature. :)

verified duplicate.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
I'm sorry, but if it's a feature it's one of the most useless features implemented lately. Twice today I tried to middle click a link and missed by just enough to load a new page into the tab. Once was on a forum and I lost what I had typed in already due to how the page is coded.
You can turn this behaviour off by setting middlemouse.contentLoadURL to false. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Middlemouse.contentLoadURL for details.

I just saw that in the other bug, and have blogged it to let others know of the option.
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