IE7 Will Have Tabbed Browsing

loconet writes that early yesterday morning, "Dean Hachamovitch, IE product unit manager, confirmed that IE7, like Opera and Firefox first did years ago, will have tabbed browsing as one of its new features. Asa Dotzler,from Mozilla, points out that Dean reminds IE users who have not upgraded to XP that tabbed browsing can be added to IE through 3rd-party add-ons." cryptoz adds a link to this InformationWeek story which says that the tabs will be very "'basic' due to fears from Microsoft that tabbed browsing might scare off too many users. The feature is only being included because IE is slipping in the browser share market."

Comments

Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as needed

[cOdEgUru]

If M$ is listening (and for the sake of IE, I hope they are) the biggest need to save IE right now is an ability in XP to uninstall IE cleanly. I mean, one should be able to uninstall and install IE at his whim. No strapping it down to the OS crap!

My brother had his PC infected by a smart viral strain of CoolWebsearch, a nasty Browser Hijacker. I ended up spending a few hours trying to clean it and every time I thought I did, it would pop back up. I gave up, installed Firefox and asked him never to touch IE again. If I had the ability to go to the Control Panel, and nuke IE altogether, thereby getting rid of any unsavory plugins that might have been installed along with it, and doing a fresh install back again, I wouldnt have forced him to move to Firefox. I understand that Browser Hijacker has aspects outside the realm of the browser, but providing the ability to uninstall and reinstall gives power back to the user.

And this is totally understandable for a bad product. Obviously you want to strap it down with hooks in to the OS as deep as you could, preventing anyone from removing it, since if the user realizes that they could remove it, the first thing they would want to do is nuke it.

Cancel button after download

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell is it that right after I download a huge file in IE ... A dialog box pops up with a huge cancel button saying "copying from temp directory"?!? It's common I'll be typing something and press the spacebar by accident and it kills the moving file. Why the hell would I download a massive file and suddenly want to kill it at the last minute while it was being copied from the temp ?? Who wants such a feature??

This is really a stupid "feature" of IE. I doubt they'll fix it cause well quite frankly I won't be surprised if IE developers use FireFox.

Share slipping...

[bluprint]

The feature is only being included because IE is slipping in the browser share market.

Umm...and? I think there is some implied meaning in the above statement, but I'm not sure what it is. Isn't that what companies do? If they see trends in the market shift towards certain features/needs/wants of consumers, they respond with providing consumers with what they want.

Re:Share slipping...

[ssj_195]

I think the implication is that Microsoft are lazy and arrogant (having previously dismissed tabs as being useless, and stating that "their customers did not want them"). Microsoft have allowed their browser to languish horribly, to the detriment of the users that they apparently hold in high-esteem, and the only thing that has gotten them to actually make any improvements is the threat of losing market share. Microsoft will now, of course, crow about their revolutionary new Tabbed Browsing(TM) feature that they have provided to enhance your browsing experience, and the unknowing masses will fall for it hook, line and sinker, praising Microsoft as an innovative company who puts the needs of its customers first. This is what, I think, gets most people's goat.

whoopdy doo

[Anonymous Coward]

Where the hell is CSS2.1? or SVG? Or fixes for the problems which keep causing web developers to spend longer hacking their sites for IE than actually developing it in the first place.

And they're working on tabs?

Re:I don't Comprendo.

[fullcircleflight]

Corporate branding is one reason marketshare is desirable for Microsoft. When using MSIE, "Microsoft Internet Explorer" is displayed on the top of the bar, along with a Microsoft logo in the top right corner. People can then associate "using" the Internet, with "using" a Microsoft product.

Re:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede

[Tim C]

If you remove IE - specifically, if you remove MSHTML.dll - all sorts of things will break. In XP at least (if not 2k) Windows Explorer will break. SQL Enterprise Manager (v7 was the last I used, I believe) will break. The Help Centre will break.

Lots of stuff, both MS and third party, uses mshtml.dll for rendering of HTML because it is guaranteed to exist.

What could be useful is the ability to return IE to an "official" condition, eg base OS install, SP 1, etc, in a single step. That would either require a read-only medium, or some particularly impressive voodoo magic to ensure the integrity of the installation files (whether cached or redownloaded).

Never forget that a machine infested with spyware is compromised. If you're sufficiently paranoid, you can't trust *any* data or executable on it any more.

Re:I don't Comprendo.

[I confirm I'm not a]

Why is the "web browser" even considered a "market"? It's not like I pay any extra for IE. For that matter, most of these browsers are free, right?

From a consumer/end-user perspective, you're probably right. From a content-creator/geek perspective, the "market" is dominated by a browser that doesn't play nice with other browsers, leaving the web-content people with a choice: (1) support IE and ignore everything else, (2) ignore IE and code to standards, or (3) code to standards, then hack until it works on IE. I "choose" option 3, but I live for the day standards-compliant browsers like Firefox, Opera, Konqueror and Safari dominate the market.

So... long story short: it's only folk like me who consider there to be a web browser market... probably!

Re:IE, Idiots Explorer

[Mind Booster Noori]

I cannot believe that people still download and use it with so much other competition around.

Unfortunately most people use it because:

• It comes bundled with the most used OS;
• The are shitty^W poorly-writen sites that can't be viewed with other browsers

What IE7 needs is a better security model

[Gopal.V]

Isn't that what companies do? If they see trends in the market shift towards certain features/needs/wants of consumers, they respond with providing consumers with what they want.

If you think the lack of Tabbed browsing is reducing IE's popularity, then I want whatever you are smoking. IE is getting unpopular due to spyware and drive-by-installs of malware. Why people are switching to firefox is to avoid those porn popups and phishing sites.

Security and geeks tired of fixing their in-law's PC's is the reason for IE's market share dipping. Oh, and faster PC's capable of rendering XUL fast.

Re:Scared?

[geordie_loz]

I always thought this was the point of the tabs. The task bar now separates "Tasks" i.e. "Tasks I am doing, like writing documents, browsing the internet, listening to music".

Now I switch between those tasks. If I want to reference a page while I write a document the ALT-TAB still works, so I can jump back and forth. Then if I want to reference another web page, I switch my task over to "browsing the web" find the tab (sub-task) in the browser window and the ALT-TAB back to the document to continue.

Clear separation of user's view of tasks (things I have to do) rather than the os view of tasks (processes I am running).

Now contrast that to having 20 browser windows, 4 documents and a media player. All of a sudden I can't see the wood for the trees.

Prediction!

[bigbigbison]

I'm predicting right now that IE7's new tabbed browsing feature will come complete with IE only HTML code for webpages to open links in new tabs. Which, of course, means that it is only a matter of time before we have pop-up tabs!!!

Re:Scared?

[pomakis]

Why do we need two methods of "show me the hidden window" just because some of our windows are in firefox and some in the explorer? What do we gain again from tabbed browsing?

It's called a hierarchy, and it can be quite important. Let's change your situation around a bit, shall we? Let's say you wanted to switch from Word to Outlook. How would you do it without this hierarchy?

alt+tab Excel - no.
alt+tab Firefox - no.
alt+tab Firefox (tab 2) - no.
alt+tab Firefox (tab 3) - no!
alt+tab Firefox (tab 4) - NO!
alt+tab Firefox (tab 5) - NO!!!
alt+tab Outlook - yes, finally!

Re:Scared?

[sconeu]

MS Apps that use tabs:

Excel
Visual Studio