Firefox tabs problem

February 28, 2006 1:52 PM

Help me make middle clicking open a new tab in Firefox for me at work.

I am on XP Pro SP 2, Firefox 1.0.7. In about:config browser.tabs.opentabfor.middleclick is set to true. In the control panel on my mouse, there is no option to fiddle with the middle button except to change the scrolling length. What to do? I want my middle clicks at work too!

posted by chiababe to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Is your mouse throwing up one of those "cross-hair scroll me" useless things? Maybe you can uninstall the mouse driver and try it again. YMMV.
posted by jon_kill at 2:10 PM on February 28, 2006

What mouse/driver? I found I had to disable the default middle button behavior on some Logitech mice, setting the middle button to "middle-click" rather than what Logitech wanted it to be.
posted by AstroGuy at 3:26 PM on February 28, 2006

I ran into the same problem recently when I installed a Microsoft Intellimouse. Their driver/software remaps the middle click to do various things, none of which happen to be "Firefox - Open Link In A New Window". Imagine that.

Solution? Uninstall the MS driver - XP detects the mouse just fine as a generic pointing device, and you'll get all but the "special" key functionality. It was a sacrifice I was willing to make, at least.
posted by rabble at 4:18 PM on February 28, 2006

Modern logitech drivers set third mouse button click (your scroll wheel) to autoscroll by default. Microsoft does something similiar on their 4+ button mice. You'll need to change it to middle click to make this work.

You may need to download the latest mouse driver for your mouse to make this work, the drivers on many CDs are flakier than a good apple pie.
posted by Mitheral at 4:21 PM on February 28, 2006

Mitheral is right. I had to change my mouse scroll weel to middle click for it to work. Start/Control Panel/ Mouse Properties/3rd Button then apply this setting for the middle button.
posted by essexjan at 4:54 PM on February 28, 2006

Microsoft Intellimouse Driver version 4.12 allows you to specify actions by program for each button (up to five if you have them). It is only approved for up to Windows 2000, but it works well in XP and for every mouse I have used it with.

You can get it at Microsoft's site after much digging around, or from a variety of sites by googling.
posted by Manjusri at 5:33 PM on February 28, 2006

Update: I uninstalled and reinstalled the mouse driver, restarted the computer and it works now. Yay middle click!
posted by chiababe at 10:19 AM on June 28, 2006