Duh,  just like the summary dictates, middle clicking in the bookmark
window or on the toolbar should open a new tab...

It should open a tab in which window? I think clicking a link on a web
page, whatever button, and clicking one in a GUI window are always
going to be different. But maybe I'm just old-fashioned, I still think
apps and this newfangled web thing aren't the same thing. :)

Seriously, this leads me to think there may be something wrong about
the  way the bookmark editor is attached to a particular window/tab
that mightn't be the one I'm primarily using (now, maybe much after I
opened the bookmark editor in the first place). I have no better
suggestions though, except for trying to make the bookmark editor less
central by further improving bookmark matching while typing to the
location bar. Ideally I don't think I should ever leave the browser
window to manage bookmarks in the first place. But I'm digressing..

I think this is notabug given the current design. Currently we have
three ways to open a bookmark in a new tab.

1. File->new_tab
2. context menu-> newtab
3. shift+ctrl+o

and if you use tabs by default double clicking on the bookmark should
open it in a new tab too. see bug 109224

Oh I should using middle click here would suck, because regular users
tend to use the mouse button to scroll and accidentally opening something because you clicked by accident sucks.

I don't have context-menus in the bookmark toolbar in Epiphany 0.6.0...

Is the middle-click on bookmark buttons that bad for usability?  I
don't personally see the accidental-click as that big an issue, but
I'm quite possibly wrong.  ~,^  This is something that most other
browsers do, as well, and as it stands, there is no _easy_ way to do
this.  Sure, I can open a new tab, then click the bookmark button, but
I'm lazy.  ;-)

Dave, this sounds like yet another necessary evil thing intoduced by 
tabs. Certainly if it would bother normal users we should not dot it, 
but would that really happen ?

heh, I would say it's not too much of a problem.   Most users never
even  discover the *right* mouse button or its functions.  The number
of users that discover that their middle button exists or that their
scroll wheel can be clicked as a button is probably very low.

I believe it's a reasonable guess that the intersection of people who
are aware of their middle mouse button and people who use tabs is
quite large, making this not only safe, but a pretty easy decision.

Personally I'm favorable to middle click on toolbars buttons (Dave, 
they are advanced features anyway, off by default, remember ;), I 
dont think middle click on the treeview should open in new tab, 
though.
Anyway I'll prolly wait a patch for this ... way too busy doing other 
stuff :/

yeah but alot of users do accidentally middle click on stuff (keyword
"accidentally"). Middle click to do anything has its problems among them:
1. hidden functionality, I really dislike hidden functionality, even
if its for a feature we're not that happy about, i'd rather have
something be visual and easy to learn rather than obscured for someone
to accidentally trip over.
2. Mac users have only a single mouse button which makes using this
functionality harder for them. (i want to cater to as large an
audience as possible).
3. Not accessible, every feature should for the most part be
accessible via the keyboard. While I'm not all that fond of right
clicking on topic buttons in the toolbar to open all of them, I'd much
prefer this to a hidden middle click.

1. (problem with hidden functionality, prefer a more visible way to do
this)

Well, the point to the feature is split-second access to opening
bookmarks in the bookmarks bar in new tabs.  I'm not sure how much
more visible one could make such a feature - it's inherantly kind of
obscured.  Take middle-clicking and dragging on files in Nautilus, for
example.  Those features are pretty much limited to middle-clicking,
but it's there so that geeky users can make use of the functionality.
 Of course, one might argue that Nautilus is wrong here, but I don't
think that's the case either.

2. (mac hardware users have one button mice)

Bah.  I'm tempted to say "screw them - make them pay for their
weakling mice!"  But of course that's not the real answer here. ;-)

One could also make it Shift+click opens a bookmark from the toolbar
in a new tab.  I just want the ability to get super-quick access to
certain pages behind the current one I'm browsing.  Yeah, that's
geeky, but it doesn't interfere with the way non-geeks would browse
with Ephy (Barring accidental middle-clicks, but I really call into
question the frequency of accidental middle-clicking.  I don't think
I've *ever* seen someone do that, and I've done in-home tech support
for years.  However, I'd certainly defer to someone like Seth, Calum,
or Anna, since they're the experts and have done formal user testing,
etc.)

3. (not accessable)

Does my answer in #2 take care of this?  I'd think so, but I'm not an
a11y expert by any stretch.

*** Bug 117648 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I think this should be discussed with Seth or Calum. Personally I dont
think the hitting accidentally problem is major in this case. If it
happens it's way easier to understand it then things like middle click
on page paste url.
I tend to consider bookmarks toolbar items like links, so maybe the
behavior would be consistent (but topics would be an odd case).
I'm more worried that we are implementing a way to open several
bookmarks at one time fastly in a way that is hard to find.

Someone asked me how to implement it.
Both ephy-topic-action.c and ephy-bookmark-action.c emit a go_location
signal. I think we should add a gboolean new_tab to it and change the
callback in toolbar.c to follow it. Or maybe flags would make it more
extensible (likely to be used ?). Chpe, what do you think ?

Only commenting on how to implement it:

Imo there's no need to add a flag to the signal. All you need to do is
 event = gtk_get_current_event ();
in the callback, and look at the event to get the button# used to
click. And please make it keynav accessible, too.

An example of this is in window-commands.c::window_cmd_view_reload().

Yeah that should work.

I think that this is important for consistency. The back/forward/home
buttons move you to another page, so does clicking on a bookmark, to a
user they are all links to a different web site. So having middle
clicks work on links on websites and not on the rest of epiphany is
going to confuse users. Yes I know that middle click is something that
most users will not notice but to those who do it should be
consistant. We shouldn't have an "advancded" feature implemented
inconsistantly just because not everyone can agree on it.

*** Bug 125766 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Just pasting some info from duped bug 125766:

 - popup on bookmark-buttons? - Quite inconvinient, hard to find for
average user, tends to get bloated, ...
 - middle- or right-click on bookmark-button? - Not everyone has three
mouse buttons, right-click could be confusing.
 - <ctrl-click> on bookmark button? - Safes one keystroke and maybe more
natural than <ctrl-T>, <click>?

Created attachment 21176 [details] [review]
Implementation of middle button click  on tollbar bookmarks

Created attachment 21194 [details] [review]
Middle button patch, fixed bookmarks menu

Dave what do you think about the patch before I review the code ?

Luca, sorry I forgot about this patch :/ I remember you had another,
can you give me bug number for it ?

It was bug 117650. The patch includes also the changes for the middle
key, but needs some minor refinement (atm enables ctrl+enter on smart
bookmark  but not in the location). I'll post an update asap

I've posted an updated patch in the bug 117650 a couple of weeks ago.

Target 1.2 -> 1.4 due to feature freeze.

Created attachment 26359 [details] [review]
implement middle-click for bookmarks toolbar buttons

This patch implements only opening of bookmarks in new tabs for the toolbar
buttons. (See comment #8 where marco agreed with that).

Also see bug 127703 about implementing the bookmarks right-click menu on
bookmarks toolbar buttons.

But one way of opening in a new tab/window doesn't have to exclude the other.
Bookmarks and links are roughly the same concept to most people, so it's
unfortunate that it is possible to middle click (if enabled) on some of them to
open new in a new tab/window, and not on others. It's an inconsistency, and as
people have already pointed out, it makes the bookmarks toolbar much less useful
to those who have opted to have the bookmarks toolbar but want to be able to
open those bookmarks in a new tab or window.

Also, Dave's usability comments, while still correct, seems to be applied out of
context. Is the accidental middle clicking on the mouse wheel, by users that
instead want to scroll, a big problem, as Dave points out in comment #4? Yes, a
lot of people don't have the fine motoric skills to be able to scroll the mouse
wheel without pressing it too much.
But this piece of usability knowledge of course only applies to areas where
users may want to scroll, which in the case of browsers generally is the web
page area of the screen. Users rarely ever try to scroll toolbars or buttons, so
applying that piece of reasoning on such areas seems to be very out of context.

In comment #9, Dave highlights concerns over hidden functionality and
accessibility. That should rightly be concerns for the UI designer, but *only
if* the functionality is not possible to accomplish with an accessible/visible
method. That's not the case here -- you would still be able to open a bookmark
in a new window or tab through the bookmarks window. So there are other
accessible and visible ways of accomplishing the same thing, so this general
wisdom about hidden functionality and accessibility does not seem to apply here.

Created attachment 26564 [details] [review]
improved patch

Comment on attachment 26564 [details] [review]
improved patch

Open-in-new-tab can cause crashes, see galeon bug 116256 and its dups.

Created attachment 26649 [details] [review]
updated patch

Comment on attachment 26649 [details] [review]
updated patch

Sorry, wrong patch attached.

*** Bug 141310 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Should we open the new tab on middle-click mouse _down_, or on mouse _up_ ? My
patch does it on mouse down, but I'm no longer sure that's correct.

The same of normal click I'd say. So mouse up ?

Created attachment 27763 [details] [review]
final patch, uses button-up

Checked in.