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How do I make firefox open URLs from clipboard with middle mouse button as in previous versions?

  • 6 replies
  • 5 have this problem
  • 8 views
  • Last reply by Kuli

In previous versions (before Firefox 17), I could select some text like "some.url.tld/path", move the mouse into a tab, and open that URL with the middle mouse button.

With the recent releases, this only works if the text contains the protocol. That means, it still works with "http://www.mozilla.org", but it doesn't work with pure "www.mozilla.org" any more. The only solution is to open a new tab, paste the URL directly into the adddress bar, press return, and close the previous tab. That's rather complicated.

middlemouse.openNewWindow and middlemouse.paste are already set to true in config.

Is it possible to return to the old behaviour?

In previous versions (before Firefox 17), I could select some text like "some.url.tld/path", move the mouse into a tab, and open that URL with the middle mouse button. With the recent releases, this only works if the text contains the protocol. That means, it still works with "http://www.mozilla.org", but it doesn't work with pure "www.mozilla.org" any more. The only solution is to open a new tab, paste the URL directly into the adddress bar, press return, and close the previous tab. That's rather complicated. middlemouse.openNewWindow and middlemouse.paste are already set to true in config. Is it possible to return to the old behaviour?

All Replies (6)

Hold the Ctrl button and give a try

This doesn't work either. The only difference is that if there's a URL including the protocol in clipboard, firefox opens it in a new tab, which it should not. If the clipboard only contains the URL without protocol, it still doesn't do anything.

This doesn't help much either. As said, this setting is already true.

In https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135884, there's lots of discussion about this, but no mention of the changed behaviour. It was suggested in 2005, with the remark that you could middle-click onto the URL icon as a replacement. It seems that it made its way into the code base somewhen last year without any notion. Alas, there is no URL icon any more where I could click.

Is there any way to return to the old behaviour? Even though many people complained about it, I would give a lot to have it back!

Of course, this doesn't help either. middlemouse.paste is only for text fields. It doesn't specify how to open URLs on middle click.