Hope, I’m right to ask here. I do only see this on Ubuntu Linux, not Windows.
When clicking with middle mouse anywhere else on a page but on a link, then in the same tab the most recently closed tab will be loaded. I find this very annoying as this always happens when middle-clicking slightly next to a link. (i.e. missing it and loading a recently closed tab instead). This drives me crazy.
Does anybody see the same behaviour with Firefox on Linux? I am on Nightly 56 (no addons). To reproduce just go to https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mozilla and middle-click on any of the white space.
Are you sure it’s the most recently tab closed, or the most recently highlighted URL?
I’ve seen this behaviour in Firefox on Linux as long as I can remember, I expect it’s to fit in with the Linux paradigm of “middle mouse pastes most recently highlighted text”.
To turn it off, go to about:config (hey, you could highlight that and then click your middle mouse button!) and set middlemouse.contentLoadURL to false.
I would be really interested if there’s telemetry data about this behaviour?
AFAIK there’s data that DevTools are only open for a very short time because user hit F12 or other shortcut by accident and think WTF and immediately close it. I only have data for Edge here (see “The motivation and data behind this change” section). AFAIK there are plans to take action because of this as mentioned in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13225543
Anyway, I’d guess that it’s the same for this UX “feature”. So I’d guess the pattern is:
User hits white space with middle-click
New URL is pasted
User immediately presses “Back” or “Close” button
If step 3 happens that I’d argue that this ‘feature’ is more of a ‘bug’. I’m using Linux for 15 years now and very much accustomed to the ‘middle-click pastes clipboard’ (and really love it). But this was really driven me nuts because Firefox felt crazy. I’m a firefox fanboy, so no worries but I could really understand people changing browser because of this… Kind of like mouse gestures that are not known to a user (and hence offed by default).
I must be honest, until today, I’ve only ever ‘used’ this feature like this:
It was after seeing the name of the about:config pref that I wondered if it might be mimicking the ‘middle-click paste behaviour’. Now that I know how it works, I might find it somewhat useful.
I wouldn’t mind at all if it was off by default and still hidden behind a pref, though.
but I could really understand people changing browser because of this… Kind of like mouse gestures that are not known to a user (and hence offed by default).