You can use Ctrl+left-click to get the same 'open in new tab' behaviour as middle-click.

I do agree that broken middle-click is hugely annoying. I'd much prefer they fixed that though, rather than introducing a non-standard popup as the default left-click behaviour.

I don't really understand why they hijacked middle-click in the first place. Does anyone actually use middle-click + drag to scroll? I would've assumed the majority have scroll wheels? Is this some accessibility thing that I'm missing?