That is exactly what we do, to prevent the need of bogus URL shorteners to count clicks. Unfortunately Firefox is the only known browser to have issues with this approach.
We haven’t found any workarounds that fix Firefox without breaking all the other browsers that work fine.
As a totally unrelated aside, have I mentioned that Google Chrome is an excellent free browser on every known platform?
[quote=“codinghorror, post:52, topic:7747”]
Google Chrome is an excellent free browser on every known platform?[/quote]
<pedantic>There aren’t any browsers that are on every known platform.</pedantic>
Browser diversity is good. Standards-based code enables diversity and innovation in UIs. I sometimes grumble about the way the wwweb has removed barriers to entry into my formerly erudite workspace, but really it’s a good thing.
Places I know that middle-click-new-tab still works in Discourse: The post preview tab, the “speech bubble icon” in the top bar, and the unread topics list.
I don’t think anybody is advocating that. What’s been said is “This is a known bug with Firefox, that isn’t breaking any other browsers, and at the moment we don’t have a workaround that fixes it for Firefox that doesn’t make the whole experience (link tracking) worse for everybody else (ie using t.co links so that nobody knows what a link is pointing to) that isn’t affected by this”. And really, there is a simple workaround in ctrl-clicking a link instead of middle clicking.
As to “what’s being tracked” - I don’t know Jeff (@codinghorror) personally, but I know him by reputation having followed his blog for years, and he’s earned enough goodwill from me to believe that he’s not tracking anything nefarious. But, it’s open source code, so we can always go and look to see how the link tracking code works. Maybe I’ll do that for you if I can find a few spare moments.
Thanks, WearySky! First I’ve heard of it.
Edit: @Jorpho points out that this is mentioned in the first post of this subthread, although I did not correctly interpret the information at the time (it says control-click works, but not that control-click is equivalent to middle-click - I read it too literally 
).
Sarcasm aside, @CaptainPedge is implying that @codinghorror is simply dismissing this HUGE CRAZY BUG that BREAKS THE SITE COMPLETELY without putting any thought into it, but what I’m saying is it’s not a huge crazy bug in the first place because it’s pretty easy to work around it, and @codinghorror’s comments in this thread have shown that he has, actually, put quite a bit of thought into it. The “this site works best in Netscape” image link in particular implies that our friend the Captain is
It seems like the only actual solutions available that fix middle clicking in Firefox are to remove click tracking entirely (which removes a pretty useful function, IMO), or make it so that all links are t.co (or something equivalent) links (also removing useful functionality, and likely would cause people to click FAR fewer links, and ALSO putting click tracking in somebody else’s hands). Neither of these is a particularly optimal solution, when ctrl-clicking still works.
Actually, it’s right there in the first post. 
Surely there’s got to be something in the FireFox config somewhere that governs how middle-clicking should differ from ctrl-clicking? Is there even a Bugzilla report already?
Good grief! If I had known i was going to get this much crap for reporting a (imo) fairly substantial bug, I wouldn’t have bothered.
I don’t think it’s out of line to not want to have a particular browser installed on my machine just to view one single website, which is the impression I’m getting from @codinghorror’s comments about chrome, a browser I have tried but REALLY did not like.
I don’t think its out of line for me to want a little more information about what information about my habits that bb is tracking and how and why.
I don’t think I ever said anything about a “HUGE CRAZY BUG that BREAKS THE SITE COMPLETELY” and I really don’t appreciate having words put in my mouth.
I, personally, don’t know Jeff from Adam and I have no intrinsic feelings of trust towards him.
It seems to me that I am not the only person around here who isn’t an expert programmer. I had no idea there was a difference between middle clicking and ctrl+clicking.
The Netscape image was a dig at Jeff’s suggestion that I should switch browsers specifically for this one site, I’m not going to do that, and I imagine that most of you wouldn’t either.
I still fail to see what is so brilliant about click tracking and I could live without it.
I don’t feel I should have to make posts like this justifying myself for simply making a bug report, but I find that this is the second time in this thread I am made to do so, the first being an exchange which has since been expunged from the record.
But you don’t have to have a particular browser installed, is what I’m saying, because all you have to do is ctrl-click links to get the exact same behaviour. And you were certainly implying (and still said it, in this very post that I’m replying to) that this bug is a “fairly substantial bug”, which it’s really not. But I apologize for putting specific words in your mouth that you didn’t use.
I think the issue here is that there’s a fundamental misunderstanding in that there are those of us who know that ctrl-clicking a link opens it in a new tab the exact same way as middle clicking, and didn’t realize that people DON’T know about that. Specifically since it was mentioned in the very first post in this thread. As a point of fact, I had no idea that middle clicking behaved that way in the first place, as I’ve only ever used ctrl-clicking, and therefore couldn’t see why it would be a big deal to just ctrl-click instead of middle click. But if you had no idea that ctrl-clicking opens a new tab, I can see why you would think this is a pretty significant bug.
Hah! I totally thought you were being sarcastic. Whoops! 
I can confirm 100% it’s broken in Chrome too. It’s not broken in the same way - but it’s clearly not handling middle clicks appropriately either, and it seems to be a symptom of the same actual problem (that discourse is hijacking the click, making certain assumptions that don’t really hold, and then trying to do something that is very understandably seen by Firefox as “naughty”). Middle clicking makes the page scroll randomly, messes up the cursor, etc. and so on, because it’s not properly registering as a click event for some reason. Maybe the reason second clicks don’t work in Firefox and IE and mess up in Chrome is that the click event isn’t being released properly somehow?
Regardless:
I use Chrome and find it incredibly annoying.
I use Firefox on another machine, and also find it annoying.
I very much see it as a bug in discourse, since it’s frustrating and unintelligible behaviour that breaks existing standards set by almost the entire rest of the web (and still manages to be better than the Disqus link system, huzzah!)
And in my opinion, Firefox is the one handling it correctly here. It does seem that Discourse is doing something sketchy and uncommon to links, and I think Firefox is probably right to warn about that sort of stuff…
Disclaimer: This post might have some inaccuracies as it stands, and is based on things as described in the thread. It IS an open source project, and I’ll hopefully be getting some time to look into the code and see if there’s a non-sketchy, functional way to achieve the same goal.
Well, if autism is really a spectrum I’m definitely in the so-called “normal” range, but definitely pretty close to the edge, like most code-jockeys. Definitely.
Really, though, my life does not revolve around Discourse, and I use hundreds if not thousands of websites routinely in the course of my work, and consequently I am not likely to stop middle-clicking uselessly on BB. I’ve done it a half-dozen times today, because this is the only site I’ve ever used that behaves this way. Which, frankly, makes the idea that there’s really no other way to do click-tracking without resorting to URL shorteners seem a bit unlikely, you know?
But Jeebus, I really don’t care that much. It’s just a bug report! If the Discourse team wants to send it upstream to Firefox they can, or they can just ignore it as WONTFIX. It’ll make me less likely to visit BB if Firefox isn’t well supported, but again who cares? BB has tens of thousands of viewers, one less won’t matter (especially since I run Adblock and NoScript and SDC and never see any advertising anyway).
I’ve been experimenting with middle clicking all over BB (I use Chrome) since reading this thread, and I haven’t been able to make it do anything other than open links.
Capturing the “onclick” event for a link, and doing something before actually redirecting the link, is actually done all over the place. Discourse isn’t capturing your click, and then redirecting to another website that’s different from target of the link that you’ve clicked (at least, not that I’ve been able to tell) - because if it was, ctrl-clicking would fail in the same way as middle clicking, it would (rightly so) determine this as being shady behaviour. It’s capturing the click, doing something with it, and then directing you to the same link.
Hmm… let’s see - I do have one slightly uncommon modification to my middle click system. I have middle-mouse-button-scroll enabled. Do you? That might explain the difference between our experiences?
Then I’ll be honest - I’m not actually sure what discourse IS doing. I’ve never experienced this on other sites, and I’ve now confirmed issues across Chrome (on Mac), Firefox (on Linux), and the newest IE (on Windows) on Discourse. Whatever Discourse is doing, it is very much NOT something that is done “all over the place”.
Edited to add:
Also, I’m trying again now, and on Google Chrome it isn’t actually opening up clicks after the first /at all/. I thought it was earlier, but it doesn’t seem to be now.
Edited again:
Actually, it sees to be that on Chrome clicks after the first require a double click in order to click the link.
I’m not sure what you mean by “middle-mouse-button-scroll”, in the context of “uncommon modifications”. My middle mouse button scrolls the screen up and down when I scroll it.
Perhaps this is the difference in our Chrome experiences then, a Windows vs Mac thing? And the issue you’re reporting (middle clicking not working after the first middle click) sounds like the IE11 bug mentioned above, which HAS been addressed as something that needs to be looked at.
But that’s the same issue I’m having in Firefox, as I stated in the post you are referring to.
Does your /button/ scroll, or does your /scroll wheel/ scroll. Important difference. With middle-mouse-button-scroll enabled, clicking the middle mouse button somewhere other than on a link will create a small circle with two arrows in it, and then you can drag the mouse to scroll vertically or horizontally (similar to pinch and drag on touch screens). This is the button-scrolling I was talking about, and from my experience it does not come enabled on Chrome (but I may be remembering wrong, it’s been a while since I set up Chrome configs, and for inexplicable reasons I remember this varying across OSes for both Chrome and Firefox last I checked)
The issue in Firefox is that it’s triggering the spam popup blocker when you try to middle click links within posts (those are the only links that are tracked). This is different from the behaviour in IE11 or Chrome on Mac (or apparently Firefox on Linux), where a middle click works once, on ANY link, but never again.
Ahh, I see what you mean. And yes, clicking the middle mouse button outside of links behaves that way for me in Chrome (and I certainly didn’t set it up that way, since I didn’t even know it could do that :))
Dunno what to tell you, but this is NOT what I experience. I get EXACTLY the same behavior in Firefox 23.0.1 as I do in IE 11.0.9431.181.
100% the same behaviour
I find it pretty much mandatory on any site I visit with horizontal scroll. I am always amazed by people not knowing it exists, until I remember that it’s completely non-obvious and most people don’t visit sites where it would be an issue regularly. (damn infinite canvas comics!)
Anyways, I should not that even on Chrome it only effects links in posts - I can middle click your name successfully as many times as I want, anyway.
