2025746 - Middle clicking alternate engines should open a new tab in the background

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement, P1)

Description

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Following up from bug 2011220, based on UX feedback, the tab should be opened in the background (i.e. not become the selected tab) so that the search mode switcher popup can remain open even for the address bar. When holding Shift, the tab should be opened in the foreground (i.e. as the selected tab).

Comment 1

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: Bug 2025746 - Middle clicking alternate engines should open a new tab in the background. r?mbeier

Comment 2

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/commit/1568ce61f0e1
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/6be2f3036ba9
Middle clicking alternate engines should open a new tab in the background. r=mbeier,urlbar-reviewers

Comment 3

[Cristian Tuns]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/6be2f3036ba9

Comment 4

[Phabricator Automation]

firefox-beta Uplift Approval Request

• User impact if declined/Reason for urgency: This partially addresses feedback we got for the search bar reimplementation that shipped in 149.
• Code covered by automated testing?: yes
• Fix verified in Nightly?: no
• Needs manual QE testing?: yes
• Steps to reproduce for manual QE testing: See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2025746#c0
• Risk associated with taking this patch: low
• Explanation of risk level: trivial fix
• String changes made/needed?: none
• Is Android affected?: no

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: Bug 2025746 - Middle clicking alternate engines should open a new tab in the background.

Original Revision: https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D289509

Comment 6

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu]]

Verified the changes to both address bar and search bar for middle click functionality for USB search engines on Win 11, Mac 13 and Ubuntu 22.04 using Nightly 151.0a1 (2026-03-26).

Comment 7

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Indeed wontfix for 149 I think.

Comment 8

[Pulsebot]

https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/commit/0b51f27bc1af
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/ad9f3a46a579

Comment 9

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu]]

Verified the changes to both address bar and search bar for middle click functionality for USB search engines on Win 11, Mac 13 and Ubuntu 22.04 using Beta 150.0b4.

To note that I've spotted a small regression -> bug 2028773 Backrounded Firefox window with middle click USB open flickers when closed, which seems to be indirectly related to part of this functionality, more exactly to the USB remaining open after the middle click/ctrl+click is used.