Did the problem start with the new search bar design in Firefox 34?

If you want to switch back to using the old bar, it's still hidden inside. Here's how you would do it:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box that appears above the list, type or paste search and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.search.showOneOffButtons preference to switch it from true to false

This doesn't affect the current window, but each new window you open (Ctrl+n) will have the old Search bar.

I'm not sure when that will be phased out...

Thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately it did not solve the issue. It did seem to bring back the old search bar but middle clicking a search suggestion did not switch to the new tab.

I can verify this function worked in v 34.0, but I do not know exactly when it stopped working.

Most of my machines run v 36.0.1.

Thanks again.