[Bug 23240] New: Normatively specify that right/middle mouse button presses do not cause click/dblclick events

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=23240

            Bug ID: 23240
           Summary: Normatively specify that right/middle mouse button
                    presses do not cause click/dblclick events
           Product: WebAppsWG
           Version: unspecified
          Hardware: PC
                OS: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: DOM3 Events
          Assignee: travil@microsoft.com
          Reporter: garykac@google.com
        QA Contact: public-webapps-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, www-dom@w3.org

Simon Pieters writes:

What should happen when the user clicks the middle mouse button?

The current situation is as follows:

* Gecko always fires a click event on the document that bubbles and has as
target the element being clicked.
* IE doesn't fire a click event if the target is a link, but does fire it if
another element is clicked even if it's a descendant of a link.
* Blink/WebKit always fire a click event on the element being clicked.
* Presto never fires a click event for middle mouse.

There even might not be fired in some browsers if the click starts panning mode
or some such.

The problem with Blink/WebKit's approach is that sites do something on click
which doesn't make sense to do if the user clicks the link with the middle
mouse button which should open the link in a new tab. Both actions happen which
is not what the user expects.

IE's approach maybe works most of the time but fails when a link contains
elements, so seems suboptimal.

Gecko's approach probably works pretty well but is a bit magic and would still
fail on sites that put the listener on document or window but still assume the
left button is being clicked.

Presto's approach works always AFAICT.

All browsers fire mousedown and mouseup as normal for middle mouse button, so
e.g. games or mapping apps that really want to use the middle mouse button
separately can still listen for it with these events.

Since click event for middle mouse button is already unreliable, it seems that
sites can't depend on it being fired if they want to use the middle mouse
button. As such it seems to me that the best approach is what Presto does, to
never fire click for the middle mouse button.

Blink bug for this issue is
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=255

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Received on Friday, 13 September 2013 16:34:51 UTC