417251 - Search bar magnifying button should respect common shortcuts to open links

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Description

[Andrés Delfino]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b4pre) Gecko/2008021306 Minefield/3.0b4pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b4pre) Gecko/2008021306 Minefield/3.0b4pre

Middle clicking the magnifying button, should open the search results in a new tab, in the background.

Middle clicking the magnifying button while pressing <Shift>, should open the search results in a new tab, in the foreground.

Right now, is works the opposite way, which is confusing.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

This depends on the browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground pref (the pref name is misleading, it applies to most UI elements and not just bookmarks).

Comment 2

[Andrés Delfino]

(In reply to comment #1)
> This depends on the browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground pref (the pref name
> is misleading, it applies to most UI elements and not just bookmarks).
> 

Why the need of opt-in for consistent behavior?

Comment 3

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Are you saying that the search button behaves differently than, say, a bookmark in the bookmarks toolbar, when middle clicked? They are consistent for me.

Comment 4

[Andrés Delfino]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Are you saying that the search button behaves differently than, say, a bookmark
> in the bookmarks toolbar, when middle clicked? They are consistent for me.

The first place where a user learns about middle clicking is in a Web page. When middle clicking a link in a Web page, the user sees how it opens in a background tab. I think everything middle clicked should act that way, to be consistent.

Comment 5

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

browser.tabs.loadInBackground controls content area middle clicks, while browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground controls UI middle clicks. They have different default values. I don't think we plan on changing that - the use cases for middle clicking content vs. chrome are different. If you still think this should be revisited, please file a Firefox::General bug with this in mind.