I know that overriding expected functionality like this is considered a "no-no", but let's not loose sight of the fact that this "UX trick" was used on a logo, on the masthead, on the site's header.
What do you really want if you right-click on a logo like this? If you did indeed want to right-click & save-as to get the image, this feature takes that a step further and actually offers you a selection of high-res images to choose from -- it's adding not subtracting.
Its not like this trick is used unabated and disables functionality completely, like those "don't steal my image bro!" javascripts...
IMO this could even be expanded further, i.e. Link to company's about/contact pages, mission statement etc.
The logo acts as a gateway to the company -- I like it.
This has actually got in the way of expected functionality for me. I've often right clicked on the logo to try and open the github homepage in a new tab.
My laptop doesn't have a middle mouse button, and it's a modern Dell. Naturally I use a real mouse when I'm on a desk, but remember that not everyone has a middle mouse button.
Try clicking both right and left touchpad-button on your laptop. At most (all?) laptops it will open the link just as if you had middle-mouse-clicked it.
That works in X, but I've never seen that work in Windows. And when I have used it, the timing was only about 9/10; the other times I get a left-right click combo, or a right-middle combo, or something else equally disastrous considering how the X clipboard works.
So do I. I just tried it. I get a left and a right click. So the menu shows up for a little while, then it follows the link anyway. Wherever the Emulate3Buttons setting is in Windows, it's not on for me. I open new tabs by right clicking then left clicking for a reason, and it's not because I don't know about the dozen other ways to open a tab.
I'm surprised nobody's suggested "hit tab until the link is highlighted, then hit the menu key" yet. There's another great workaround.
I think the problem here is that you can't presume to know what the user is trying to do. For many, the right-click has become the gateway to pretty much any functionality besides a normal click. It's probably safe to say that a majority of the users are trying to perform this functionality, but as mentioned above, if they aren't it would be nice to have the option to disable this "feature".
The actual images aren't quite what I would call "hi-res" - 512x512px at 72dpi for the Octocat, for example. Seems like if they are going to all this trouble they should include a few sizes, not just a few formats...
Specifying the dpi gives the print size of the image. So basically instead of printing very small and hi-res this will print as larger but with low-res; so it makes sense as the claim is that the images are not hi-res.
What do you really want if you right-click on a logo like this? If you did indeed want to right-click & save-as to get the image, this feature takes that a step further and actually offers you a selection of high-res images to choose from -- it's adding not subtracting.
Its not like this trick is used unabated and disables functionality completely, like those "don't steal my image bro!" javascripts...
IMO this could even be expanded further, i.e. Link to company's about/contact pages, mission statement etc.
The logo acts as a gateway to the company -- I like it.