[Kde-accessibility] [Bug 44931] middle click behavior: open link in new window or paste a url

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

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http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44931     




------- Additional Comments From thomas.friedrichsmeier at ruhr-uni-bochum.de  2003-05-15 16:14 -------
Subject: Re:  middle click behavior: open link in new window or paste a url

Let me try to re-summarize what really makes up the problem. I'm sure not 
everybody will agree - but I'll give it a try:

mmb has two different functions in konqi:
1) pasting stuff
2) opening a link in a new tab/window

actually it has three quite different uses:
1 a) pasting a URL/search-string
1 b) pasting text in a form
2) opening a link

Now that in itself is not the problem. And I'm not arguing to _remove_ any of 
these features. The problem is, that those three uses live in potentially 
very close vicinity: You can have a textfield in a form next to a link, next 
to a non-link. Where exactly you click may produce extremly different 
results. Some have argued, that this is potentially hazardous especially if 
you accidentally paste a URL/search-string (or konqueror believes, that's 
what you were trying to do), while actually you were trying to paste 
something into a form.

So how to resolve this? My favorite approach would be to separate the three 
uses in space. One way of doing this would be to e.g. make the URL-pasting 
work only on the arrowish button to the left of the location-bar.
Yes, that would mean, that if you want to paste a URL via mmb, you need to 
position your mouse over that button instead of just clicking anywhere in the 
window. However, since at least in my personal use of konqueror, mmb-pasting 
URLs is much less common than uses 1b) and 2), that would seem more than 
acceptable to me. It will mean, that use 1 a) will be slightly harder to 
accomplis, but certainly performing the mmb-click on a button instead of in 
the main window is not exactly a big deal to those claiming "I never misclick 
ever".

(As rather personal remark, let me add, that it never seemed entirely logical 
to me, to be able to drag-and-drop or paste to an inherently _read-only_ 
viewing-area. Yes, you should be able to paste in the location-bar, and yes, 
we might automate pasting and opening a URL by allowing mmb-clicks on the 
arrow-button, but really, what's the logic in pasting something into the 
rendered view of an HTML-page?)

Thomas