Detecting middle mouse click event jQuery

Question

I want to show a jQuery-UI dialog box as a popup when user clicks on left mouse button or the middle one. It works for left click (I get the alert box and after that the pop

Answer 1

Use mousedown or mouseup instead of click. And (unless you are using a very old version of jQuery) use .on() instead of .live():

$(document).on("mousedown", "a.external", function(e) {
   if( e.which <= 2 ) {
      e.preventDefault();
      alert ("inside if");
   }
   popUp.start(this);
});

...where ideally you'd use a parent element much closer to the link than document.

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/7S2SQ/

Answer 2

To get this working fully in Firefox (40.0.3), I had to implement .on('mouseup', fn), as follows:

$(selector).on('mouseup', function (e) {

    switch (e.which)
    {
        // Left Click.
        case 1:
            // By way of example, I've added Ctrl+Click Modifiers.
            if (e.ctrlKey) {
                // Ctrl+LeftClick behaviour.
            } else {
                // Standard LeftClick behaviour.
            }
            break;

        // Middle click.
        case 2:
            // Interrupts "Firefox Open New Tab" behaviour.
            break;

        // Default behaviour for right click.
        case 3:
            return;
    }

    // Pass control back to default handler.
    return true;
});