Clicking the story pane sometimes opens the original site

problem
#1

I’ve noticed some strange behavior in Chrome on Ubuntu lately. I haven’t seen this happen anywhere else, and I often use Newsblur in Windows+Firefox and Chrome OS and those are both working as expected.

I’m using the 3-column view, and sometimes when I click on a story title in the center column (the “stories” pane that shows the titles and thumbnails of all the stories in the feed), it opens the original story up in the current tab. It’s as if I right-clicked, and hit “open”, except it opens in the current tab instead of a new one.

I’ve only noticed this happening in the past month, and only on my Ubuntu desktop. It doesn’t happen every time I click on the middle pane, but it’s often enough that I’ve been noticing it a few times a day lately.

#2

Sounds like Chrome isn’t honoring the target attribute of the link, which is supposed to be in a new window/tab. Sounds like a regression in Chrome, since I haven’t changed anything on the web-side.

#3

My mouse drivers on my Ubuntu system are also fairly busted, to put it politely. A regular click sometimes registers as a click-and-drag. It could be related to my mouse problems, but even if I manually click and drag that element, it wouldn’t open the story up in the current window like that.

If it seems like a Chrome bug, then I’ll keep an eye out and let you know if I notice this happening on my Chromebook.