For more than a decade, my main computer has been a regular PC tower. Alongside Windows XP as my default OS, I’ve become well acquainted with the 3-buttons mouse. Whether for gaming, text editing, or just browsing, the middle click has supplanted the right one as my second most used button.
Due to my job as a web designer, I spent most of my time switching between Photoshop, Notepad++ and Firefox. For the latter (as for any browser), the middle-click became such a natural habit in my browsing process that I feel impaired by its lack.
When I purchased an iMac for my music production needs, I decided to hang on to its unusual Magic mouse. Although clumsy with it at first, I considered it required some adaptation that would eventually lessen my frustration over time. I felt using this mouse validated my decision to follow the “Apple way of things”, but I still enabled the quite uncanny right-click.
The lack of middle-click was hard to get accustomed to. Opening a link in a new tab required either Cmd + click or Right click + navigating the menu. I couldn’t browse the web like I used to: solely with my right hand, leaving my left one free for drinking, eating, or smoking.
Browsing Hacker News or any link-filled aggregator required some more involvement from my side. It’s not exactly a burden, but rather a small inconvenience. The only website that actually became easier to browse is Designer News. As a front-end developer and heavy web user, I loathe the target blank feature. I’ve always been an advocate of a tolerant user experience by avoiding any unwanted disruption, no matter how small.
But with a Magic mouse, or with any regular laptop trackpad really, the target blank feature becomes less an annoyance and more a satisfaction. And considering how, allegedly, most designers use a Mac (and especially a MBP), I wonder if that’s the reason why a site like Designer News has implemented the target blank.
Although I tend to use my Mac more, and have started to make some web design work with it, I still wouldn’t impose any kind of browsing interference on my users.