Freaky thing with firefox in linux

[Smike]

(FFox 1.5, Mempis 3.4)

When I click the middle button on my mouse on random bit of the page (mostly if I miss a link), I currently go to a google search of all the text on that page (although I think in the past I've been taken to completely unrelated places).

Is this some amazing feature that I just haven't understood?

ETA: I have just realised that it is related to what's in the clipoard. If I copy the word "Doom", I get taken to the Doom page at IMDB.

 

[skoob]

Right, it's one of those hidden features that's been there in web browsers since at least early versions of Netscape (on *nix, that is). Pasting a url from the primary selection (IOW middle clicking) onto a web page will take you to that url. If you enter something that isn't a valid url, Firefox will by default use whatever you entered as a search query to Google's "I'm feeling lucky!".

This can be really handy. If you come across a non-clickable url, just select it and middle click. Sometimes it's also possible to make really quick web searches by selecting a few well-chosen keywords in a web page.

Obviously, it can also be really confusing to unaware users. It's not that easy to figure out why Firefox suddenly goes to some random web page when you middle click by mistake.

However, it seems like the keyword searching part of it has been removed in (the upcoming) Firefox 2.0. At least in the alpha I'm using, only valid urls are accepted.

It's possible to disable the whole thing by setting middlemouse.contentLoadURL to false (enter about:config in the location bar, filter on e.g. "middle" and double click that line).

 

[tsg]

(FFox 1.5, Mempis 3.4)

When I click the middle button on my mouse on random bit of the page (mostly if I miss a link), I currently go to a google search of all the text on that page (although I think in the past I've been taken to completely unrelated places).

Is this some amazing feature that I just haven't understood?

ETA: I have just realised that it is related to what's in the clipoard. If I copy the word "Doom", I get taken to the Doom page at IMDB.

KDE (and probably Gnome) has a quick copy/paste mechanism that allows you to highlight text with the mouse and paste it somewhere else by middle-clicking. Firefox uses the middle click to open a link (either in a new window or a tab depending on how you have it configured). My guess is the clipboard is being pasted to the new tab/window and Firefox is doing a search on the pasted text.

If it really bothers you, you can disable the paste-by-middle-click feature (not sure how, but I can find out). Or don't miss .