GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 376013
Middle-clicking on toolbar buttons should focus the new tab
Last modified: 2018-08-03 19:18:41 UTC
One of the annoyances for me with Epiphany vs. Firefox is how Epiphany handles middle-clicking on toolbar buttons. Middle-clicking the home, back and forward buttons in Epiphany opens the links in new tabs in the background. Firefox, on the other hand, opens the links in new tabs and also focuses them. I think Firefox's behaviour is better here. Clicking on those buttons means that you really want to see the links they are pointing to right now. For example, if I do a google search and I want to save those results for later, I'll middle-click on the Home button which takes me to www.google.se and type in a new search. In Epiphany I have to first middle-click Home, then focus the new tab which Epiphany opens in the background.
Created attachment 76711 [details] [review] Makes it so when you middle-click on buttons, the new tabs are always focused
Epiphany's normal and desired behaviour when middle clicking a link is to open the new tab in the background. Making middle click on a toolbar button focus a new tab and middle click on link not, would be a bit inconsistent imo. However I do admit that the use case for middle clicking links and for middle clicking toolbar buttons is a bit different, because with weblinks it is often the case that you want to open a lot of them in the background. With navigation buttons there is only one possible target. Also, the New Tab toolbar button opens and focuses a new tab. (Trick question: what should middle clicking that button do? :-)
This needs to be discussed on ML (epiphany-list or maybe usability list), IMHO.
Ok. Here are two relevant reports dealing with middle-clicking toolbar buttons: #378165, #362591. And to answer your trick question Reinout, middle clicking the New Tab toolbar button should open a new tab to the URL in Xorg's clipboard buffer. :)
I use back and forward buttons to duplicate tabs, please don't change that :). I don't think it's inconsistent to open tabs in background when the user middle clicks back/forward/home because let's start asking 'which users middle click buttons?' my answer for that is power users that know where the hell did they tabs went, normal users do not assume that middle clicking buttons is actually possible and it's not like they get lost if they middle click back and see a new tab pop behind the current one. NOTABUG in my opinion.
If you want to duplicate tabs, you can repeatedly press Ctrl+t. With the patch, you can still use the back button to open multiple tabs. The difference is that with current behaviour, if your history contains the pages A, B, C, D, E, five middle-clicks on the back button will open five tabs in the background all loading page A. With the patch, Epiphany will open five tabs loading the pages A, B, C, D, E and with focus located at E. For power users... They mostly do not use Epiphany, they use Firefox instead because Epiphany lacks many useful features that it has. For example, in the Firefox interface, you can middle-click on most anything and it will do the right thing. In Firefox, it is really not a power user feature it is a middle-click-aware user feature. They obviously have spent a lot of thought on the interface design and if they do it in a different way than Epiphany, IMHO that should be enough of an argument for the Ephy devs to atleast consider changing their design. But I think it is very hard to appreciate the importance of minor things to features, like how focus moves, unless you use the feature yourself.
Cloning tabs is not the same as control+t a lot. Doing middle click on back button subsequently would mean that history is lost in subsequent clicks, this breaks the logic in my opinion. I would end thinking "were the hell did my history went". Also, if you middle click the back button you expect the page before the actual one to be loaded in a new tab. If you middle click again you will see another different page loaded (?) and like that until you runt out of history in that tab (?). If a user wants to middle-click back button to open item #N in you back history you can click the arrow next to the button and middle click the correct item. I sincerely don't find opening A B C D E one after the other logical. And power users like you and me use Epiphany :), and not to attack Firefox but if FF implements it then it doesn't mean we should. We are not a clone of Firefox done in GTK+ because it's uncool to use XUL.
Moving to 2.20 target due to feature and UI freeze for 2.18.
Any decision on this?
Diego, please bring it up on the epiphany/usability lists like chpe suggested.
It was brought up on the mailing list: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/epiphany-list/2006-November/msg00055.html Me thinks chpe should decide if he want it or not.
If this were to be implemented as an extension, we could try it out first before making the final call.
Moving Severity:enhancement bugs off of 2.20 target.
I might be interested in implementing this as an extension if I'm given a go (since I already plan to do some stuff on the “Back”/“Forward” buttons).
Check the "3rd party extensions" list on the wiki first, iirc someone already has written an extension for this (?) :)
wontfix? notabug?
No, I think it's a valid concern.
I reported a similar bug concerning the handling of opening new tabs out of the bookmarks, see Bug #501722 It is the same issue, bookmarks are opened inside new tabs in the background. Firefox opens the in the foreground. about:config has two keys to handle the way links are opened browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground = false browser.tabs.loadInBackground = true browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground controls the way how new tabs out of bookmarks (and those navigation buttons) are opened. The problem: Epiphany always opens links in new tabs in the background, no matter if browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground = true or browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground = false is set. It would be nice if the user could control the behavior at least by changing this key.
about:config is not the place to set Epiphany preferences. That would be gconf.
*** Bug 501722 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message -- This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity. You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/epiphany/issues/114.