The missing paste behaviour of the middle mouse button is the most annoying non-feature of the windows platform. Each time I have to work with a windows machine I have to actively remember that it only supports the clipboard. This is very frustrating.
No article about mouse buttons is complete without a reference to mouse chording, a topic not very well known outside plan9:
For more info see “Mouse chording” at wikipedia:
I’m generally a really big fan of convention in cases like this, but maybe this time I should play devil’s advocate.
Wouldn’t it be a logical assumption that most apps have a special need for a mouse button, and that mice should have an undefined button to fill that need?
The tab thing in firefox is a great example. Pasting into a command shell is another.
In google earth it helps panning a LOT (But that ability, critical to google earth, doesn’t apply to any other apps I use)
So I guess I’d say I’ve argued your point before, and I do agree, but I think there is a valid, perhaps better argument for just having a little undefined, hard to learn, ugly messiness in our GUI.
Instead of [mighty mouse sucks], you should instead link to [“mighty mouse sucks”] for a more accurate barometer of feelings towards the Mighty Mouse.
The former search rather quickly loses focus and such items as Mickey Mouse – or just mice in general – sucking, become commonplace quite quickly.
wheel click to scroll also sort of works in outlook (although you have to keep it held down which is a bit odd)
But some wheels also have a tilt functionality which is just getting silly… http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1241298,00.asp
Well, had no idea that I could middle click remove a tabpage…
The middle mouse button is just the one I use to put something on during gaming.
And having a 5 button mouse, I also use two of them for browsing: next previous page.
But my 3-button trackball doesn’t have a wheel, so middle-click to scroll is a boon to me.
How strange - I’ve always thought the middle click scroll-lock style behaviour is much preferable to the scroll wheel! I also like middle click open/close tabs, although undo close tab is a life saver with this. UNIX middle-click paste always catches me out, although not as annoying as right-click paste in PuTTY. However I suppose it’s just a case of what you are used to, and some conventions for what it should do would indeed be nice.
Microsoft? Settle? Standard?
You’re funny.
I kinda prefer mouse gestures to chording. It’s the first plugin I install on a new comp.
On most mice clicking the middle mouse button is hard (it resists a lot more than the LMB and RMB), and it’s too easy to accidentally roll the wheel when you just intended to click.
So I just avoid the middle mouse button altogether.
Hey Now Jeff,
While they create a standard for the middle button they might as way create standards for the 4th 5th buttons on the sides of mice.
Coding Horror Fan,
Catto
Clicking the scroller closes tabs??
Well, looky here.
That’s GREAT!! 
"In the UNIX and X Windows world, the middle button has also meant paste since way, way back in the 1980s. I can’t find any evidence of this behavior on Windows or the Mac, however. "
On my OS X 10.4.11 working in terminal pastes selected text at the cursor position with the middle-click.
There is exactly one case, where I use the “modal” autoscroll mode:
When I’m at the end of a document and want to go back up to the beginning, autoscroll is faster than scrolling and easier to perform than hitting “Home” on the keyboard (provided you don’t have your hand glued to the keyboard all the time)
I like defining my own meanings for the different mouse buttons and thats the way I like it. The only way it would be better is if each application allowed me to specify it’s meaning to do what I want within it.
I NEED one of the buttons to be defined as back. Especially when I am hunting for something using Google or using Explorer to navigate the folder system. Moving the mouse all the way from the center of the screen,up to the tool bar and back each time I want to perform a very common action is cumbersome.
It makes perfect logical sense for me to use the thumb button for back and the ring finger button for forward. The only draw back being I hit these on accident on occasion. (accidentally hitting back after filling out a form is no good) So I use the scroll wheel for this purpose. Left mouse button clicks to open folders / follow links, middle button to go back.
Pasting into text areas wouldn’t necessarily conflict with the tab behavior, but it’s an odd hodgepodge of behaviors to attach to a single button.
I think we can handle it. Consider what the left button can mean:
- Select
- Drag
- Deselect (when clicking in an otherwise “dead” area)
- Select many (dragging a selection box)
- Use (single click)
- Activate (double click)
I hope over the next few years Microsoft and Apple can decide on a set of standard middle mouse button behaviors.
And I hope they can go with an established behavior that’s been shown to work.
“double-clicking” remembers me of the iPod/iPhone touch… took 3 days till I noticed that you actually can “double-click” the HOME Button.
I use the middle mouse button in a quasi-modal manner for autoscrolling, and the absence of this on my mac is a bit painful for me – scrolling long pages to the top isn’t quite fun. A dedicated chording key would be interesting for me…
But personally, I feel having more than three is an overload. A scroll wheel w/o button and a button near the thumb would be ideal for me; although left-handedness can be a prob…
Just to get all theoretical here, I think a multi-button standard would have trouble staying useful and orthogonal over different applications. Maybe, if all you do is websurf there may not be a big problem, but I work a fair amount in 3D apps-- and each one has a different way of moving/rotating/flying through space. I imagine that the same would be true for other kinds of more-or-less specialized applications.