GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 132924
Definition for mouse actions
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
As it is now, one can use the left button or the right button to enter a menu in the menubar. From what I know the right button came first, and the left button was added much later. I think it is a waist of a mouse button, that two out of three does the same thing, so here is my suggestion: Make menus have the same behavior as icons, buttons, etc., so entering a menu is done by the left mouse button. This would seam logic to me, as a menu or menu item is sort of a button. The middle button should be kept for text paste. The right could take the action of Alt+left mouse button, which moves windows. To me it would seam logic, that something as important as moving windows has it own mouse button. It is something that is often done, and having this action as its own button, would make it blazingly fast and conve nient to move windows, as one wouldn't have to move the mouse to the window bar.
What button moves windows is up to the window manager. In general, in GNOME right-button, if let through by the window manager, is going to give a context menu. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 116890 ***
So the right button is better left unchanged then. But what about disable the use of the right mouse button in the menu bar, to make the left mouse buttons action more consistent? In a manual it would be much more clear to the user, if something like this could be written: LMB Used for button and menu selecting MMB Used for text paste RMB Reserved to the window manager (often used for context menu) At the moment I think it is a bit more confused what the buttons actually can do.