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The inbox used to mark an item as read when I use my middle mouse button to open the item in a new tab. It no longer does this. It does recognize that I clicked it, but requires me to click the refresh button for it to be rendered in the current tab. I assume this is a bug. If that assumption is right, please fix this.

I wonder if this has any connection to I'm clicking the same message multiple times to get it to clear, is it broken, or is something else happening? getting completed (apparently it's done and staff response is just pending).

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    Same happens with Ctrl+Left clicking. It's not specific to middle clicking alone. Right click + "Open in new tab" does not mark anything as read (which is consistent as before, even if undesirable).
    – VLAZ
    Commented Jul 2 at 15:22
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    OK, as extra information middle click and also Ctrl+left click both reduce the counter - if you had 3 unread message, you go down to 2. But the message in the inbox still stays the same
    – VLAZ
    Commented Jul 2 at 15:26
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    Note that the previous implementation of this was broken, and would frequently mark the notification read without actually opening it (I suspect due to triggering on mousedown rather than the link actually being activated).
    – Ryan M
    Commented Jul 3 at 1:40
  • @RyanM yes, previously it was marking on mousedown. So, if you click that also initiated loading the new page and sending the request to mark the message as done. The reload might happen before or after the request to the backend finished, so some times simply left-clicking once might or might not mark the notification as read. You could work around it by clicking and holding - that'd trigger the mousedown and send the request and also mark the notification as read. But wouldn't initiate the navigation until you released the mouse. It's how it used to work.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Jul 3 at 9:30
  • Now it's not even attempting to mark the notification as read, it seems. It only sends notification via the beacon API (which solves issues with sending a request and navigating away at the same time).
    – VLAZ
    Commented Jul 3 at 9:30
  • This report is appreciated. There are various ways that users can interact with inbox notifications and we'd like to do a holistic review with the UX team on the desired behavior before embarking on further changes, so that it doesn't become a game of whack-a-mole fixes.
    – Berthold StaffMod
    Commented Jul 5 at 22:46
  • @Berthold Maybe you could also consider stackapps.com/questions/5059/… for your review of the topic
    – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
    Commented Jul 5 at 22:58
  • I genuinely wonder- how hard can this be? if the user requests a resource with the same URL as an unread item in their inbox, mark that item (and potentially other related unread items) as read. if that's unacceptable for performance reasons, then fine, but that seems like the simplest, most robust way to implement it from a naive perspective.
    – starball
    Commented Jul 5 at 23:18
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    @Berthold same as it was before the bug started: middle click used to mark the item as read, without having to click the refresh button.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jul 6 at 6:47
  • @samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz That's an interesting addition to the holistic review, I have passed that along!
    – Berthold StaffMod
    Commented Jul 8 at 18:06

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