Finally; IE has tabs!


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Not the beta release

In late April, Microsoft contacted me to tell me that it was going to implement tabbed browsing in MSN Search Toolbar with WDS, providing Internet Explorer users with a feature Mozilla, Opera, and Safari users have enjoyed for years. I received a near-final build of WDS that included the feature. A week or so later, however, I discovered that tabbed browsing was being removed from the initial public release of MSN Search Toolbar with WDS.

What happened? According to MSN, the tabbed browsing feature had been added too late in the process and wouldn't have time to undergo the stringent testing it required. But on June 9, 2005, Microsoft re-released MSN Search Toolbar with WDS, and this new version now includes the tabbed browsing feature. Here's how it works.

First, you'll notice when you launch IE that a new Tabs row has been added to the UI below the MSN Search Toolbar (Figure). It doesn't appear to be implemented as a discrete toolbar and is, instead, manually attached to the top of the IE display frame. This isn't a huge issue: Arguably, that's where it should be located, right? But you can't display the MSN Search Toolbar and the IE tab row separately, so now when you add the MSN Search Toolbar to IE, you're removing a significant amount of vertical space. To save space, of course, you can drag the MSN Search Toolbar up next to the Address Bar or Standard Buttons toolbar.

In any event, the Tabs row includes a few UI elements by default:

My Tabs. This is a button with a drop-down menu that lets you configure the My Tabs feature, which I describe below.

Open links in background tab. A button that toggles how links are opened by default. In its default (not selected) mode, hyperlinks you click on Web pages open normally. However, when this button is selected, hyperlinks open in new "background" tabs that appear behind the current tab.

Tab for the current page. Even if you have only one tab displayed (which is the default), you will see a tab for that page. There is no way to turn off this feature, as you can in other browsers.

Show all tabs. A drop-down menu that lets you access all tabs, create a new tab, and access the tabbed browsing options sheet, which is part of the MSN Search Toolbar Options dialog (See below).

Source: WinSuperSite

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Groovy, although Ill probably still use Firefox. I dont consider myself a FF fanboy before the flames start, just my browser of choice.

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I would have appreciated this say a year ago. I have become accustom to FF now (not a fan boy like forster said), and I'm not going to just run back to IE.

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Groovy, although Ill probably still use Firefox.  I dont consider myself a FF fanboy before the flames start, just my browser of choice.

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same here. i am way too used to firefox now. i will stay with it until i see what IE7 is like.

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I also prefer a browser with tabs, instead of cludgy toolbars like these...

IE 6 is also hopelessly behind for my needs besides the tabs, so...

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I don't like it :no: I understand that this is an extension to IE and not built into IE, but I still think they could have done a better job. I certainly hope that IE7 does a better job with tabs then what this has, otherwise there isn't a chance of me switching back from Firefox.

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I don't like it :no: I understand that this is an extension to IE and not built into IE, but I still think they could have done a better job. I certainly hope that IE7 does a better job with tabs then what this has.

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Totally Agree. After trying it for an hour, i have uninstalled it.

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It sucks, you cant use the middle button to make a new tab with that link, you cant right click a link and say open a new tab, its really bad..

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It's a good idea just not implemented very well. I'll stick with Maxthon for when I'm running Windows.

Oh and oddcrap, did you even read a little bit of the first post? Even a sentence or two, idiot?

Good god how have all the worlds idiots stumbled into one, once cool section of the internet.

Anyway...

Firefox is an abomination, people.

Congratulations.

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Why do you guys need tabs anyway? There are the same thing as task bar icons just they are at the top of the screen? There is little if any benifit of having them there. It is just a bloatware feature that has caught on.

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It sucks, you cant use the middle button to make a new tab with that link, you cant right click a link and say open a new tab, its really bad..

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Hopefully it's not the final version of IE7 that microsoft will be releasing to the public.

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finally. ive always wanted tabs in ie rather than proper css or xhtml standards support.

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The thing is, using something like Firefox also kills support for a lot of sites that are based around IE. I would easily make something like Firefox my primary browser if that weren't the case.

And when you try complaining to a site to work properly, they always state, "Internet Explorer is the only browser we officially support."

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The thing is, using something like Firefox also kills support for a lot of sites that are based around IE.  I would easily make something like Firefox my primary browser if that weren't the case.

And when you try complaining to a site to work properly, they always state, "Internet Explorer is the only browser we officially support."

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yeah. blame the developers of those sites cuz they can't code using REAL web standards. that is their bad, not the browsers.

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What a disappointment, every time i clicked on a link it opened a new IE instead of a tab( i clicked on button on the taskbar to enable this ) i had to right click the link then choose to open in a new tab. Which caused the 2nd problem, both tabs would then flick back & forth between each other around 2 times a second constantly...

I really hope tab implementation in IE7 is better than this :(

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