While running the firefox browser is mostly an intuitive experience, it is very
disconcerting when you meant to middle-click on a link to pop it open in a new
tab and instead the tab your on loads some seemingly random page from the web.
Yet this is what happens any time you miss click with the middle mouse button in
the firefox browser. This is a feature of firefox, enabled by default, that can
only be adjusted in the about:config URL, so it cannot be turned off by normal
users. The preference name is middlemouse.contentLoadURL. Please disable this by
default. I cannot stress this enough.
Please disable middlemouse.contentLoadURL by default.
It is non-intuitive. It is very disconcerting to someone who doesn't know why
their browser suddenly changed pages when they didn't intend for it to change.
And it is very annoying when you miss click when trying to middle-click a link
and the browser is suddenly highjacked by whatever text happens to be in the
select buffer.
While the feature may be a boon to advanced users who never miss their mark with
a mouse and know what the browser is doing when they middle click in the middle
of nowhere on thier browser window, it is a very serious bane to every other
user. Especially to any new users. Among other things it will give new users the
impression that the browser is buggy and doesn't always go where they want it
to. That is not the kind of impression that I think new users should get about
the default browser included in Ubuntu.
This sort of change to desktop defaults can't be decided arbitrarily in response
to a bug report; it needs to be discussed publicly first. You should raise the
issue for discussion on ubuntu-devel, and try to reach a consensus there. Then,
if necessary, reopen this bug to track the change in defaults according to the
consensus view.