Middle button functionally

[nonne]

The middle button isn't really much used currently in Haiku, so I have been thinking about how it could be used to speed upp some tasks for the poweruser. One nice thing would be to use it for moving windows in the background or just give a backround app focus without bring it to front. Another thing it could do is to let the user select options in a menu without closing it. As an example at the deskbar if i would like to select 24 hour clock, show seconds and european date in deskbar settings I could this much faster because the menu wouldn't close when I select an option. The middle button could also be used to open folders in new windows if you have choosen single window navigation or in the same window if you use default navigation. It would also reverse the the move/copy dragging compared to the left button. Would it be easy to implement this behaviour to Haiku? I think it would be really useful for speeding up things for the user.

[axeld]

I think User Interface actually is a better fit for this idea.

[phoudoin]

As an example at the deskbar if i would like to select 24 hour clock, show seconds and european date in deskbar settings I could this much faster because the menu wouldn't close when I select an option.

On that very topic, since a week or two Deskbar Settings were moved from menu/sub-menu to its own preferences window. For the reason you gave (menu options selection is not that user friendly) and for consistency with Tracker.

[humdinger]

Nevertheless, multiple menu selection is still an issue. Think of choosing the visible attribute columns of Tracker windows. Or you could start several apps from the Deskbar without having to navigate to them again and again. Maybe for these functions, the right mouse button would suffice instead: left-clicking a menu item closes the menu as usual, right-click leaves it open. I'd like to avoid middle-click action when possible, because of easier notebook usage.