New Firefox extension incompatible with Macs?
As you may know, Mac users don’t have a “right click” button. To achieve this function, you basically hold down your mouse button until a “right click” menu pops up.
Well I downloaded the new Firefox extension at work, where I have to use a Mac, and my “right click” function doesn’t seem to work. As an avid “open in new tab” person, this is seriously hindering my web browsing abilities. I’ve put in a complaint with Firefox. Might want to hold off downloading the new Firefox for awhile if you’re a Mac user.
Stephen Ward, you’re a web geek right? Help?
UPDATE: Firefox got back to me and explained that this wasn’t a problem:
Since Netscape 4, the NS and Mozilla have used click-and-hold as a shortcut into
the context menus to allow for a quick mechanism for single-mouse users on the
Macintosh platforms. The Apple HIG, however, states that click-and-hold should
be an equivalent operation to click, except for in certain circumstances (such
as Dock tiles). Instead, Apple’s recommended route to context menus is ctrl+click.Safari, Camino, Opera and IE 5 for Mac all use the standard ctrl+click to get
context menus, and do not respond to click-and-hold. The only click-and-hold
action in these browsers is on the back/forward buttons, to get the drop-down
history (see bug 102330). Firefox supports both ctrl+click *and* click-and-hold.The debate:
Removing click-and-hold will bring Firefox in line with the Apple HIG, but at
the cost of removing a feature that many established Mac users may be very
familiar with.Some (full disclosure: myself included!) feel that this change, while initially
jarring, would be worth it in order to ensure that we are complying with the
platform look-and-feel, and point out that all other Mac apps require
ctrl+click, such as iTunes (for editing an ID3 tag), and indeed, it may be more
jarring for users to discover that click-and-hold does not work as a shortcut to
the context-menu in other applications. Further, the current click-and-hold
implimentation is somewhat buggy.Others feel that the established user base would be very upset about this
feature being removed, noting that ctrl+click is still there, and this is just a
further optimization for one-mouse-button users. Buggy implementations should be
fixed, not removed.That’s about where we are.
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Related posts: Do you make music videos on your Macintosh?
Web geek… yup, that’s me. I’m glad to see you got it all worked out before I noticed the post. Chock it up to the differing usability conventions that define the Mac vs. PC debate. I’m impressed that someone at Firefox got back to you so quickly. It only goes to show the quality of the browser and the fanatical user base behind it. Hopefully the ctrl+click methodology doesn’t impede you too much.
By the way, my condolences for having to use a Mac at work.