242780 - Middle-click does not open URLs

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 222021

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Brion Vibber]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040225 Epiphany/1.0.7
Build Identifier: version 0.6 (20040502)

Middle-clicking on a URL in a message selects it (dotted line border) but
doesn't launch a browser to open it as expected, or perform any other apparent
action. Left-clicking the link does launch the URL (on my system it ends up in
Epiphany), so I know it's set up correctly.

For consistency with other Mozilla and related apps, middle-click should launch
a new browser window with the link.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open message containing a clickable URL
2. Middle-click on the link

Actual Results:  
Link is selected (dotted border), nothing more.

Expected Results:  
Link should activate and launch in the default browser.

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 222021 ***

Comment 2

[Brion Vibber]

This bug is about middle-clicking on a link in Thunderbird not doing _anything_, while bug 222021 is 
specifically about having a way to tell a browser to launch the URL in a new tab or window (which might 
be activated in several ways as proposed there).

Personally, I'd be happy if middle-click just opened a link in the same way as left-click (which generally 
is in a new window, depending on the browser's settings). It's more a matter of habit: Firefox produces 
the habit of using middle-click to open links, but the same action doesn't do anything on Thunderbird.

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Brion, you're right -- I misunderstood your bug.
Bug 270434 has been opened for the same problem,