Reader Kevin wrote in with a great utility called KatMouse that solves this problem.

There’s only one little irritation with this utility: It changes your middle mouse button click to minimize the current window, which breaks middle-click in Firefox. No problem, we can turn that functionality off in the settings.

To reconfigure this just choose the Wheel Button tab and then change the drop-down to None of the buttons, or at least anything other than the Wheel button.

Once you make this minor adjustment, it’s perfect. Note that you can also remove the icon from the tray by using the General tab.

Download KatMouse