IE8: how to open a new tab near the current one?

[jamesVault]

I have 10 tabs opened: tab1, tab2, tab3, tab4, tab5, tab6, tab7, tab8, tab9, tab10.

If I'm in the tab2 and I click on a link to open it in a new tab, the tab11 will appear after the tab10, but this is not comfortable because I have to move me to the end of list in order to reach the last tab.

Why the tab11 is not opened between tab2 and tab3 ? tab1, tab2, tab11, tab3,...

Is it possible? How?

Edited April 6, 2009 by jamesVault

[XerXis]

I have 10 tabs opened: tab1, tab2, tab3, tab4, tab5, tab6, tab7, tab8, tab9, tab10.

I'm in the tab2 and I want to open a link in a new tab11 between tab2 and tab3: tab1, tab2, tab11, tab3,...

Is it possible? How?

middle click on a link in tab2

edit: will most of the time do what you want, a middle click opens a new tab at the end of that tab group, so if tab2 and tab3 are related it will open a new tab at position 4. However, if tab2 is on it's own it will open a tab at position 3

[jamesVault]

middle click on a link in tab2

middle click doesn't work, because it opens the tab to the end of list :(

[theclueless]

did you enable tab grouping?

[feranm_ie8team]

james,

Hi, my name's Feran and I'm with the Internet Explorer Outreach Team.

You can drag and place tabs in the order you want them. There are a few other new tab features in IE8 as well such as tab grouping, which color codes tabs. For additional information about tab features you can check out these sites ? http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-...d=1&catid=1 and http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/09/3...b-grouping.aspx

I hope this helps!

Feran

[Salgoth]

james,

Hi, my name's Feran and I'm with the Internet Explorer Outreach Team.

You can drag and place tabs in the order you want them. There are a few other new tab features in IE8 as well such as tab grouping, which color codes tabs. For additional information about tab features you can check out these sites – http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-...d=1&catid=1 and http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/09/3...b-grouping.aspx

I hope this helps!

Feran

jamesVault: I've yet to find a method to open a new tab next to the current tab in IE8. You might want to check out add-ons for IE* and see what's available. Also +1 for CGar's suggestion - nothing says you can't use two browsers.

Edited April 29, 2009 by bmaher
Please don't attack other members.

[jakem1]

theclueless has the right answer. When you enable tab grouping in Tab options it does exactly what jamesVault wants.

Now, what I'd like is the ability to close a tab and have the last VISITED tab set as the active tab rather than the next tab in the list. Firefox does this and it makes much more sense IMO.

[(DisplayName)]

IE8 & IE7 are NOT the same. Tab-Grouping is NOT the answer - although it should be.

The IE8 behavior is odd compared to the IE7 behavior...here's why:

IE7 opens tabs which are children of the current tab directly to the right of their parent...so if Tab3 has the link 'click here' - when you click this link, the new tab will be opened directly to the right of tab3; this happens regardless of how many tabs were already opened to the right of tab3. The new tab is essentially squeezed into the previous line-up (added to the right of the tabbed they were opened from - very simple).

start:

TAB3 >> TAB4 >> TAB5

step1:

('click here')

result:

TAB3 >> NEWTAB (TAB6) >> TAB4 >> TAB5

In IE8 the 'NEWTAB' would be opened after 'TAB5' just as in the original example. There is no child-parent relationship...none. Not even tab-grouping (coloring) shows a proper parent-child hierarchy; all tabs opened from within a tab inherit the colour of the current-tab's group (whose origin is usually the left-most, aquamarine/minty colored tab harboring the logo of your favorite search provider, or whose history contains it... almost always...really - almost ALWAYS).

I cannot understand why this behavior would be changed (no matter how many arguments I think up, they never seem valid) and I cannot tolerate seeing SO MANY tabs of the same website scattered across my IE window away from their brothers and sisters daughters/grand-daughters/clones.

They are chronologically sorted...nothing more.

MR.PCBRAIN: 'I'm making a new tab' - (i'm too tired to do anything right now...I'll just put it at the end of the pile').

[this is completely disregarding the fact that all newly opened tabs are usually required/looked-at before ANY of the previously opened tabs...it's true!]

[it gets pretty silly from here, but it's all relevant...really-really - I promise.]

Okay, so I guess we should talk about WHY "it's true!" ...

Well, it's simple really...if you're going to open a tab, it most likely has something to do with what is on the current tab. So the question is: WHY was the IE7 form of adding children-tabs next to their parents removed?

Here's an overly deep reason for the change...and it isn't a good one:

What's really going on here is the idea that the user is 'perfect' (or perfectly-predictable) and thinks just like a programmer (or rather a program) that is trying to create a 'binary tree'. The IE8 tab ordering is assuming that the user opens each relative item one at a time and moves deeper and deeper in before finally moving on. Sadly, this is how the PC should be sorting the tabs after they're opened, not waiting for the user to 'do the right thing'.

On the other hand, if the user tries to 'do the right thing' with IE7, we get EXACTLY the same result as we would with IE8. The user traverses down, down, down - up, up , up - open the next article/item/link etc ,repeats the same pattern over and over again. The sorting seen by the user will appear EXACTLY the same. You are losing nothing by SORTING with the IE7 form of tab-adding. In fact, improvements could have been made to further improve IE7's efficiency / usefulness...such as moving tabs with NO children next to their parent after one of their 'siblings' have had children.

example:

Microsoft >> Windows Vista >> IE8

to

Microsoft >> IE8 >> Windows Vista >> Vista x64

as opposed to: (bad)

Microsoft >> Windows Vista >> IE8

to

Microsoft >> Windows Vista >> IE8 >> Vista x64

Vista x64 was made while the user was on the 'Windows Vista' page. It will also be looked at - most likely (as always) - once the user has read the rest of the 'Windows Vista page (where they may also wish to open tabs about security and system requirements) They are all related and in a logical hierarchy of some kind...they should be sorted as such - and WOULD STILL BE in IE7, but not IE8.

In this situation, would it really make sense to be looking at products offered by Microsoft , click on those products as you see them...then like any rational human-being, after having finished reading the pagem move to the first new tab ('Windows Vista') - again open some more tabs, then skip away from windows vista, read IE8 (open tabs along the way) - only to return to the Vista x64 etc tabs after your spontaneous IE8 excursion? NO...it wouldn't - NOT EVER. And this goes for almost any given situation. Why should you have to shuffle tabs?

OK then, how about we travel EVEN DEEPER:

The user is an animal. YES, the user is NOT HUMAN. The user just...'clicks' 'things'...prey to advertising. When our subject clicks and opens a tab, said-subject is only doing so to come back to the advertisement at the appropriate time. In other words, NOT when it is too busy viewing relevant things first. THEN (and ONLY then) after it has exhausted all other items (only those on the first page), will it finally come to the compulsively-opened tab that it created oh-so-long-ago. In this way, our subject can get its work done first, and then finally get around to all those distractions that it met along the way. That is how it survives...how it is able to 'click' another day.

Personally, I believe it to be an oversight (maddening) - nothing more. Something that 'just kind of happened' during the move to IE8, and away from IE7 and the like. (Unless Microsoft was having an issue with the sorting process, and opted to not fix such a 'fixable-shouldn't-be-an-issue' issue.)

THE FIX IS OBVIOUS:

Option to 'add tabs to the right of the current tab'

as opposed to

Add tabs after all the tabs.

A simple wording for a VERY simple solution.

Has the world gone insane? I think yes, for much worse 'upgrades' are being rolled out every day...and for such perfectly 'logical' reasons too. The lack of a PREVIOUS 'feature' is a feature!!! Yay, humans!

The world is insane...lazy

ok, both.

Edited May 5, 2009 by (DisplayName)

[AFKeeker]

Let me see if I can try my hand at this.

Okay, I go to a website with a forum. From the main view page, I open up 5 separate boards, each with its own set of threads. Now, being that this is my first set of tabs, everything will work like it did in IE7, with all the tabs opening to the right, in order. However, that's the extent of the similarity. From here, when I move on to the first board, I used to be able to open all the threads from that board right next to that board's tab, with all the other boards' tabs getting pushed further to the right. This is EXACTLY what I want; I don't want the threads from Board 1 being opened outside of Board 5. Unfortunately, that is not possible right now.

I don't care what color a tab is, I want them sitting next to each other when I open them, that's how I organize them. The tab grouping does me no good if they're not automatically being generated where I want them to be.

This also applies to my work, since I often have to open 4-5 documents from a Sharepoint site, and again often times from the middle of a series of many tabs. Before, I could open them all right next to the parent sharepoint site, but now they're spread all over the browser window. Please, PLEASE change this back to how it was, or at least give an option to do so. You have made a gross backtracking in your UI's user friendliness with this change.

[Tech Star]

I was about to post that you should just upgrade to IE9 if you have Vista or 7, but I saw the year this thread was created. :sleep:

[AFKeeker]

I was about to post that you should just upgrade to IE9 if you have Vista or 7, but I saw the year this thread was created. :sleep:

Alas, I am not a system admin, and therefore can't upgrade anything on my work computer on my own volition. >.<

[eagerlywaiting4u]

To James from the ie outreach team. You're an idiot. All you technical people who work for major companies think the same and that's why things are not the way they should be for the regular average person. Obviously, JamesVault is not going to want to be dragging and placing tabs where he wants them. People ,such as him and myself, want tabs to be opened next to the current tabs automatically. Who wants to do this manually! The answer who gave ,followed by a link, is just to pacify. Again, you and people like you are idiots and it'sickening. Try doing things the way people really want them to be ,for a change.

[Jebadiah]

LOL Never realized it's the same in IE9 too. I use Firefox which does it. For the time that I had Chrome on my computer, I found that it does the UI better than anybody out there even now. (Chrome is gone because I just cannot trust Google.)

There is also this mentality with various companies that if you copy your competitor, someone will make you look bad saying that you copied it. Exhibit A - The bunch of tech enthusiasts waiting to say Apple copied MS, MS copied Apple, MS copied Google, Google copied Dropbox, etc. I am sure Microsoft isn't doing the right thing for the users because someone else has already done the right thing. LOL Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? That's because it is.

The thing with Microsoft is that it's fat. Fat in the sense that it's got so many enterprise customers. They cannot just change their UI structure without breaking a lot of quality assurance and developer infrastructure of most of their biggest customers, which would become a reason for those customers to shift to newer products - "Hey, now that IE is changing the UI tree structure, why don't we just go with Chrome? Re-engineering our developer and quality assurance infrastructure for the new IE UI is going to take a lot of resources regardless, so let's just do Chrome which has been pretty consistent for 13 versions.".

It's one of the big drawbacks of being a large company. Well some would argue that it's a human weakness to have made such *optimized* products and infrastructures thus making them resistant to change, which is quite true.