Friday, December 18, 2009

Chrome YouTube Logo Middle-Click Extension

*Update - Version 1.50 of this extension also fixes the middle-click behavior of the video links in my_videos, my_favorites, and my_subscriptions.*

After finally switching from Firefox to Chrome as my main browser, I found a somewhat annoying bug in Chrome. While browsing YouTube, I noticed that middle clicking on the logo at the top didn't open a new tab as expected, but instead loaded the main page in the current tab. This was particularly annoying since I like to keep multiple tabs open when I browse, and I used the logo often to open a fresh tab for YouTube.

So, I decided to take some time to write a small extension to fix this; after about an hour (most of it spent on making icons; the actual javascript code for the fix is one line), I ended up with the "YouTube Logo Middle-Click Extension" (creative name huh?). While it's mostly just a workaround for an issue that should be addressed directly, I hope some people find it useful until the bug gets fixed.