Windows – Middle clicking a link on chrome sometimes also switches the current tab to the new one

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In chrome, most of the time, when i middle click on a link (text or image), it opens a new tab and the current tab does not change. This is the expected behaviour.

However, some websites have links (i'd say 5%) that also switches the current tab to the new one. For example: on this page, the name of the players in the main list have the problem.

By looking at the source, i didn't find anything anormal (the link is a standard html tag). But if i disable javascript, i have not the problem. I looked at the source, and didn't find the problematic script… Note also that if i open the tab with right click > open link in new tab, there is no problem.

I'd like to know if you find the reason of the problem and how i can fix it. I am running chrome 10.0.648.204 on windows 7 x64.

EDIT: the website above does not exhibit the behavior anymore, but I sill have the problem sometimes on other sites (which I don't remember)

Best Answer

The table row that those player links are on uses the following HTML/JS code:

<tr class="wide_middle" id="/replays/45470"
    onmouseover='document.getElementById("/replays/45470").className = "wide_middle_hover";'
    onmouseout='document.getElementById("/replays/45470").className = "wide_middle";'
    onClick="window.location = 'replays/45470'" ... ...

Therefore if you middle click the link you are also in effect clicking the table row, hence why the JavaScript then changes the current tab to the target page as well.

Installing this extension should be able to fix the problem.

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