Detect middle button click (scroll button) with jQuery

I have a list with a tags to play some mp3 files onclick. It is working fine when binding on the 'click' event with jQuery:

$oo.data({'__mp3play':true,'wapiHandle':h+0,'wapiIndex':o.ajaxPlayList[h].length})
		   .bind( 'click', function()
			{ var wh = $j(this).data('wapiHandle');
			  if( typeof o.regObjects[wh] == 'object' && o.regObjects[wh].play(this.href))
			   { return false; }
			});

When clicking the left mouse button: It disables default handling when my flash plugin is loaded otherwise it will be opened normally.

BUT: When I use the scrollbutton of the mouse and click on it, the click event will not fired and the link opens normally.

I have tried to use mousedown or mouseup events but doesn't help, the link always opens normally with the side effect that the music starts playing also with the flash player.

Also preventDefault() does not work at all.

Can somebody tell me how to detect the middle mouse button click (scroll button click)?

Thank you for your comments.

PS: I have already tried other solutions about the 'middle button' available on this site.

Tested in all kind of browsers with the same result.

EDIT: This also does not work, the link will be opened normally when using the middle mouse button. When using the left mouse button, nothing happen.

$oo.bind( 'mousedown click mouseup', function(e)
{ e.preventDefault(); e.stopPropagation(); return false; });

Answer

March 8, 2018

KyleMit

Please don't fire click actions during the mousedown event. It ignores the rest of the event pipeline and goes against current user expectations and design practices.

Problem

Here's a look at the normal order of events that fire for each click type:

$(document).on("mousedown mouseup click focus blur",function(e) {
  console.log("{" + e.which + ":" + e.type + "}"); 
});

Typically, we handle the very last click event because it signifies the users final intent to proceed with the current action.

The click event is fired when a pointing device button (usually a mouse's primary button) is pressed and released on a single element.

Unfortunately, middle mouse presses do not fire such an event (probably because doing so would force developers listening to the click event to distinguish between multiple possible invocations). But if we want to wire up actions against the middle click, we should follow the same UX expectations.

Solution

We'll listen for mousedown events and immediately attach a one time use handler for mouseup events. If the middle key was pressed and if the elements match, we'll trigger our own custom event with type middleclick, which we'll seed from the original event.

$(document).on("mousedown", function (e1) {
  $(document).one("mouseup", function (e2) {
    if (e1.which == 2 && e1.target == e2.target) {
      var e3 = $.event.fix(e2);
      e3.type = "middleclick";
      $(e2.target).trigger(e3)
    }
  });
});

That'll help separate out determining if the middle button was clicked with how we we want to handle it in that case, so we can setup a listener for our custom event type like this:

$(document).on("middleclick", function (e) {
	console.log("{" + e.target.nodeName.toLowerCase() + ":" + e.type + "}"); 
});

Working Demo in jsFiddle and Stack Snippets:

$(document).on("mousedown", function (e1) {
  $(document).one("mouseup", function (e2) {
    if (e1.which == 2 && e1.target == e2.target) {
    	var e3 = $.event.fix(e2);
      e3.type = "middleclick";
      $(e2.target).trigger(e3)
    }
  });
});

$(document).on("middleclick", function (e) {
  console.log("{" + e.target.nodeName.toLowerCase() + ":" + e.type + "}"); 
});

$(document).on("mousedown mouseup click focus blur",function(e) {
  console.log("{" + e.which + ":" + e.type + "}"); 
});

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.3/jquery.js"></script>

<div  style="background:#31965a;color:white;width:100px;height:100px;line-height:100px;text-align:center;">
  Click Me!
</div>

<i>* Tested in Chrome, FF, Edge, & IE11</i>