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Middle clic on a toolbar button should open a new window
Status:
RESOLVED: WONTFIX
Severity:
enhancement

Comments

Description Florian Birée 2008-07-03 15:56:24 CEST
User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; fr; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008061015 Firefox/3.0
Build Identifier: 

A middle clic open a new window in the main view, the left panel and the path bar, but not on toolbar buttons (go back, go forward, parent directory, home).

This behavior is common in softwares like Mozilla Firefox (new tab to go back/forward) or file managers like rox-filer.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Use the toolbar instead of the path bar (view menu)
2. Middle clic on one of the toolbar buttons

Actual Results:  
Nothing

Expected Results:  
The directory should be opened in a new window.
Comment 1 Steve Dodier-Lazaro editbugs 2009-09-07 19:48:10 CEST
It would be great to have a new window opened on
 - middle click
 - ctrl + click (for users without a middle button)
 - ctrl + enter (for keyboard navigation)

In the following places
 - the main view
 - the side panel (it only has middle click implemented)
 - the toolbar (so one can open a parent folder in a new window)

Thanks in advance :)
Comment 2 Jannis Pohlmann editbugs 2009-09-07 19:56:28 CEST
Middle-click seems highly inappropriate for opening directories in a new window. It is traditionally reserved for pasting and today used in applications like Firefox for closing tabs.

Firefox uses Shift+Click and Shift+Return for opening links in a new window. I wonder what combinations other applications use. A combination like this might definitely be worth adding.
Comment 3 Florian Birée 2009-09-07 20:35:47 CEST
(In reply to comment #2)
> Middle-click seems highly inappropriate for opening directories in a new
> window. It is traditionally reserved for pasting and today used in applications
> like Firefox for closing tabs.

Its already used by Thunar in all other places than the toolbar, and by other file managers like Rox-Filer. Konqueror open a new tab with a middle click (but it has a tab system). In all applications, middle click on a button open a new "something", and since there is no tab system in Thunar, it seems intuitive for me that it open a new window.

After, it's up to you, but for the coherence of the application, middle-click should always do the same thing... (and also keyboard combination submitted by Steve).
Comment 4 Jannis Pohlmann editbugs 2009-09-07 20:47:27 CEST
(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > Middle-click seems highly inappropriate for opening directories in a new
> > window. It is traditionally reserved for pasting and today used in applications
> > like Firefox for closing tabs.
> 
> Its already used by Thunar in all other places than the toolbar

Oh, you're right. Didn't work for me in the icon view. Well, if we want to use middle-click for opening in a new window consequently, we'll also have to make the standard, icon and list view use this behaviour.

> In all applications, middle click on a button open a new "something"

Firefox obviously doesn't follow this concept when you double-click a tab. It opens a new tab when you middle-click a link though, so this feels like an inconsistency in Firefox.

Ok, so I'll implement opening in a new window on middle-click in more places.
Comment 5 Jannis Pohlmann editbugs 2009-09-07 21:50:04 CEST
It appears that middle-click in GtkToolbar/GtkAction is not easy to implement  (if not impossible without subclassing), and middle-click in fact seems to be working already in several other places.

Middle-click won't help much with regards to keyboard navigation. I'm playing around with supporting middle-click in the missing places now, together with the shift modifier as an alternative to middle-click. We'll see how that turns out.

Bug #4195

Reported by:
Florian Birée
Reported on: 2008-07-03
Last modified on: 2012-09-26

People

Assignee:
Jannis Pohlmann
CC List:
2 users

Version

Version:
unspecified

Attachments

Additional information