Can’t Ctrl-click links reliably on LiveJournal any more

I can’t ctrl-click links (to open in a new background tab) reliably on my LiveJournal friends page any more.

I suspect this is related to the new JavaScript link-munging that LiveJournal does for affiliates (see no_lj_ads for details)—that somewhere in the munging, a request is made and my browser forgets that I’m holding Ctrl down and opens the link in the current tab instead of in a new one. (And really, I shouldn’t have to keep holding Ctrl down; it should remember that it was down when I clicked the link, even if it takes a while to perform the request etc.)

Annoying.

Seeing this most in Chrome, where I don’t think I can AdBlock the script. (Since its AdBlock only does things after the fact; it doesn’t—AFAIK—stop the browser from fetching and acting on content.)

…and even holding down Ctrl doesn’t work: Ctrl+click, wait wait wait wait (while nothing visible happens)… and eventually, the current page gets replaced by what I clicked on.

Right-click and “open in new tab” works, but that’s very annoying.

…though the right-click menu takes a perceptible fraction of a second to appear. Is the script firing for every mouse-up event on links, not just for primary-mouse-button-up?

At any rate, it’s long enough to “break the flow”, even if it’s sometimes under a second. Sometimes, though, definitely more than a second. For a right-click menu! That shouldn’t need anything but built-in browser behaviour! Seriously, folks!

Annoying annoying annoying.