Change default behaviour of mouse buttons for a specific instance

Question

How can I change the default behaviour of the left mose button so that it acquires the default property of the middle button, but only for a specific instance?

Eg.

<a id="special" href="https://www.google.com">CLICK ME</a>

<a href="https://www.bing.com">CLICK ME</a>

This is not real JS just pseudo code:

$('#special') function tmpSwap {
    if(event.button == 1)
        Return event as button 2 (aka button(1) is now button(2))
    }
}

Button 1 - left Button 2 - middle

So any time a hyperlink with the specific named anchor is left clicked the script runs and the behaviour that follows equates to behaviour as if the link was middle clicked.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1206203/how-to-distinguish-between-left-and-right-mouse-click-with-jquery — mplungjan, Jun 08 '15 at 07:56
I want to get around so that when I right click a link it won't take me to the newly opened tab. I want to stay on the same page while the tab opens in the background. I looked through a lot of similar questions but I have yet to find a definitive solution. — u24b8, Jun 08 '15 at 07:58
@u24b8: That's called a "pop-under" and is generally considered inappropriate. I believe somewhere here on SO there's a question that asks about it and had answers that, a year or so ago, still worked. Browser vendors continue to strive to prevent it. :-) — T.J. Crowder, Jun 08 '15 at 08:13

T.J. Crowder · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-08T08:01:50.560

The only real options you have are:

A normal link, and the user is in control by using left-click, middle-click, shift-click, shift-ctrl-click, etc.
A link with target="_blank", which will open a new window or tab depending on the user's browser configuration.
A link with target="some_name", which will open in a new window or tab (depending on the user's browser configuration) or in an existing window/tab if this is the second time they've done it.
Use a click handler and, within the handler, do a window.open with a target window name (but this largely just duplicates options 2 and 3 above).

You can't do much more than that. Nor, arguably, should you.

Side note: There is no universal action for middle-click, cross-OS, cross-browser.

Thanks for the insight T.J. Much appreciated. – u24b8 Jun 08 '15 at 08:04 — u24b8, Jun 08 '15 at 08:04

Change default behaviour of mouse buttons for a specific instance

1 Answers1