Feature Article!

Tabbed browsing

Tabbed browsing is the most obvious feature that's missing in IE 6 and the thing you most often hear about--after security problems, of course--when people complain about Microsoft's browser. Well, I'm here to tell you that the hype is true: Tabbed browsing has forever changed the way I browse the Web, and I'll never again use a Web browser that doesn't correctly support--this crucial feature. Indeed, now that Microsoft is adding tabbed browsing support to IE 7, this feature will finally reach a mainstream audience. So what is it?

In previous IE versions, IE is what we call a Single Document Interface (SDI) application in the Windows world. That is, each IE window can contain just a single document (typically a Web page in IE's case). If you wish to open a second or third Web page with IE, you need to instantiate a new IE window by literally selecting File and then New Window from the IE menu, using the CTRL+N keyboard shortcut, double-clicking a shortcut, or even right-clicking a hyperlink in the existing Web page and choosing Open in New Window. Each IE window--and thus, each Web page--gets its own button on the task bar. And if you open too many IE windows, they get grouped by the Windows taskbar. It becomes unmanageable very quickly.

Fear not, old-timers, IE 7 still supports this model. So if you like having separate IE windows, each one with its own Web page loaded, go nuts. But IE 7, like Firefox, also supports a new Multiple Document Interface (MDI) design, which lets you open multiple documents (Web pages) in a single IE window. Now, such a system requires new navigational features, and IE, like other browsers, lets you switch between separate Web pages in a single browser window through a tabbed-based interface, where each Web page gets its own tab. And as you add more and more tabs to a single IE window, they spread across the top of the window.

Fortunately, Microsoft implemented tabs correctly in every way and actually improved on the Firefox design. So, for example, you can now open and close new tabs with shortcut keyboard commands (CTRL+T and CTRL+W, respectively). You can right-click links and choose to open them in new tabs. Most crucially, you can switch between open tabs using the CTRL+TAB keyboard shortcut, which is a nice take on the normal ALT+TAB shortcut used to switch between running applications.

You can even drag tabs left and right and arrange them the way you want. Microsoft compares this feature to the way you can drag and drop slides in PowerPoint. And if you have multiple tabs displayed and attempt to close IE, the application warns you about the open tabs.

There's more. Once you open two or more tabs, you'll notice a few changes to the IE interface. First, a third icon has appeared next to the Favorites Center and Add/Subscribe icons. This icon, called Quick Tabs, puts IE into a new mode where each open Web page is displayed in a tiled format, so you can easily tell, at a glance, which window you'd like to open. And from the Quick Tabs view, you can close individual tabs, refresh any or all open documents, or right-click an individual tab and tell the browser to close all other tabs. It's pretty impressive.

Microsoft also correctly puts the Close Tab button on each tab, and doesn't use a single Close button at the far right of the browser window, as does Firefox. If you have just a single tab open (the default), you won't see this button. But once you open two or more tabs, you'll see a Close Tab button right on the selected tab, where it belongs.

Once you have a group of tabs open, you can save the group as special kind of Favorite called a Tab Group, and you can even specify a Tab Group as your home page. That's right: You can configure IE to open multiple documents every time you start up. That way, you might choose to visit a number of news sites first thing in the morning, and run through them over coffee. It's a great feature.

I use tabbed browsing regularly to open interesting links in the background, and then I go through each of the pages I opened in sequence later. It's great for researching as well. If you go to a Web search engine and search for something, you can open each link you want to investigate in a separate tab, and then move through them more easily all at once.

By default, IE 7 opens pop-ups in a new tab, not window (unwanted pop-ups are still blocked of course), and opens new tabs in the background (that is, a new tab won't grab the focus when it's created). And tabbed browsing is enabled by default. You can change all of these options. However, IE doesn't hide the tab bar when you only have one tab open, as does Firefox, though that's not a big deal.

Overall, however, tabbed browsing is just nicely implemented IE 7. This is a killer feature, perhaps my favorite, and I recommend you try it out.

Cathy Chambers