Slashdot Mirror
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."
Average IE User:
"My God! TABS! Eeeek!"
(runs away from computer)
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
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.
Rapid Nirvana
Pop up blocking, tabbed browsing and Anti-virus software. What will MS think off next?
Has Microsoft patented it yet?
Hopefully you'll be able to disable them completely - I for one don't use them in Firefox because they just don't jive with me.
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
Ah the old Slashdot spin machine... actually if you read the IE Blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/default.aspx the developers are clear that they made the WRONG decision in avoiding tabs the first time, and the tabs will be basic only at the time of beta, but they will be adding more features afterwards.
Jeremy
How soon until MS Office gets tabs? I for one often have up to a dozen Word and Excel documents open and having them all in the task bar is a pain in the UI.
a world in progress...
...except that they can't because of the anti-trust settlement from the browser wars. Remember, Explorer is an integral part of the OS, NOT A competing browser designed to force Netscape out of the market.
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.
The way Opera handles tabbed browsing and the way Firefox handles tabbed browsing are so different, grouping them both under the header "tabbed browsing" make little sense. But which of these methods will IE7 use? Or perhaps something completely different? (Personally, I think Opera's is great and Firefox's is half-assed and hacked-on. I can't imagine Microsoft following the Firefox way.)
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
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.
A modern day witchhunt.
this InformationWeek story [...] says that the tabs will be very "'basic' due to fears from Microsoft that tabbed browsing might scare off too many users.
Microsoft just doesn't seem to get it. From an "ease of use" standpoint, the best software is designed so that it's easy for a novice to use -- by hiding the "scary" options and so on. But it's also designed so that a user whose comfortable with the software can learn tricks, customizations, and so on to make his work faster. In short, the software has to grow as the user's skills grow.
Very few companies actually get this. Apple has made progress in this direction, as has the open source movement. But they're both well off.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Hey, look! This funny browser has tabs, just like in Internet Explorer!
Wait for it: The moment it is released, all the little MS Press Drones will start to sing the praises of this wonderful new innovation, brought to you buy the wonderful people at Microsoft, the fact that we (Proper browser users) have been using this excellent interface for years now, will some how be not be newsworthy Compare: Win 95 a.k.a. Mac 88
This is NOT a signature.
When MS came out with the 'un-removable' IE4, my roommate discovered that if you used the IE3 uninstaller on IE4, it uninstalled cleanly...
Yep... technical necessity.....
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
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?
You mean, you tried to remove some spyware app, but because you couldn't it's therefore IE's fault.
The reason its 'part of the OS' is that the back-end http protocol handlers are reused by every application (well, those that don't want to reinvent the wheel) to connect to the internet. 'Remove' IE (and I guess you don't mean remove 'just the GUI') would cripple a great many programs out there.
Have you tried spyware removal tools? Or even a anti-virus program? Alternatively, just vape all the browser helper objects (search the registry, you'll find them) which sounds like what your problem was all along.
Mind you, I reinstall firefox regularly (every time a new version 'patch' comes out), and every time I re-install it, all my extensions are all there as before. Strange that. I guess if I was hit by some firefox malware then reinstalling it (in the same way you describe you want for IE) would have no effect. I think you'd best stick with IE.
Not sure if it will work on IE (never tried, but I don't see why not), but I found that the equally annoying MSN messenger had an awfully hard time popping itself up unexpectely once I'd deleted all of its files.
...no two people are not on fire.
EP19950303789 19950602
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
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? So what exactly is gained by having 98% of the universe using the same browser? AFAICT, this amounts to a "Mine's bigger" war between the browsers. Not flaming here, I really want to know.
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
Tabs are patented in general by Adobe.
Tabs in browsers were created by BookLink Technologies in Internet Works. This was follwed by netcaptor(based on IE).
Tabbed browsing is not a creation by Mozilla or Netscape. But Firefox would be the first widely deployed Tabbed browser.
Will it support CSS1? Is CSS2 support scheduled for IE8.0 or should we expect that later?
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.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
My father can hardly install his own software and calls me all the time with *simple* questions. When I moved him to Firefox and showed him the tabs, he thought that was the best thing about the browser. Once again Microsoft demonstrates that they are very out of touch with the average computer user.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
The reason its 'part of the OS' is that the back-end http protocol handlers are reused by every application (well, those that don't want to reinvent the wheel) to connect to the internet. 'Remove' IE (and I guess you don't mean remove 'just the GUI') would cripple a great many programs out there.
Why, back where I come from, we used to call that a "library" and it wasn't something we'd keep all warm and idling and share-y. Back in the day, every app could load up its own copy - they ain't so darned big that it matters a whole lot - and everyone goes away happy. This whole IE approach of tryin' to lash application code to this newfangled live executing library-like-but-not code reminds me of the time Poppa Burke was down at the mill and thought we oughta try to power the grinders from the engine on that old junk Chevy he kept settin' out around back. Sure it looked like a good idea, but when he got outta the hospital later that year, he admitted it didn't make no more sense than what yer talkin' about with this IE and "helper objects" and "registry" and stuff. Me? I'm a simple kind a feller and I'll settle for muh libraries the old fashioned way, thank you very much.
Maybe they'll starting working on standards compliance.
This space for rent
If I ever tried to remove MSN Messenger, delete the files and everything, like dark fucking magic everything would reappear and launch if I ever visited a MSN-site with MSIE.
I had to insert dummy-executables in the MSN Messenger directory to get rid of it. However, editing the registry to tell Windows that MSN Messenger wasn't there would also magically cause a reinstall just out of nowhere.
So I let Windows believe the dummy executables were MSN Messenger which were still techincally "installed". That and only that did it for me.
Seems like you got off easy, you lucky bastard!
The way windows constantly tries to battle the user, if he actually dares to defy the devine intensions of Redmond... *shudder* It's really all you need to know about the OS and the vendor.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Why then can Solaris,Linux,BeOS, QNX access the internet without a integrated browser installed? Why could you uninstall IE 3 without serious harm?
You mean, you tried to remove some spyware app, but because you couldn't it's therefore IE's fault.
Well since ActiveX component technology is what allows these programs to become part of IE, I say hell yeah it's IE's fault, to an extent. A burglar is not the homeowners fault per say. But if you place a note on the door saying "no one is at home the key is under the mat", your doing everything short of asking known robbers to steal from you. The back-end http protocol handlers are reused by every application (well, those that don't want to reinvent the wheel)
A shared library is not a program! A DLL that cannot be changed or written over by any program would not allow a virus or malware and still provide your code reuse.
Because it's more user friendly to have one window with 6 tabs than to have 6 windows (mixed with the others)?
Mind Booster Noori
Mind Booster Noori
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.Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
"The reason its 'part of the OS' is that the back-end http protocol handlers are reused by every application (well, those that don't want to reinvent the wheel) to connect to the internet."
That's a lame excuse for a company who didn't even see fit to include a TCP/IP stack until around '94. Now that they have one, it's easy for every malware writer and his brother to hijack it, but nearly impossible for the rightful owner to upgrade it with something better.
This has nothing to do with efficient reuse of code. It has everything to do with Gates being a greedy sob who would fuck his dead mother's corpse if there was a buck to be made.
The funny thing in the tabbed browsing argument from the M$ guy is that it really is just so not credible, and those people really seem to think users and others are just idiots.
"Some people have asked why we didn't put tabs in IE sooner," Hachamovitch wrote. "Initially, we had some concerns around complexity and consistencywill it confuse users more than it benefits them? Is it confusing if IE has tabs, but other core parts of the Windows experience, like Windows Media Player or the shell, don't have?"
Big lie. The simple fact that they didn't even consider making it optional is because with the current IE codebase, it's just plain impossible. Everyone knows how M$ can't create modular softwares. It s not the Windows OS, it's the M$ culture and the poor programming and software engineering that is part of their habits.Well the fact that "everyone else" (OS X, KDE, GNOME) has since gone down that road would suggest is was a reasonably good idea. Code re-use generally *is* considered good programming, after all.
Well, for one, multiple windows tend to overlap and obscure each other. You then need to sift through their icons on the taskbar (Windows, Linux desktops) or use Exposé to see them all neatly arranged on the screen (OS X), then click on the one you want to use.
In any case, that's a lot more UI work than clicking tabs on a tablist which is always in sight, or using shortcuts to move through it.
I've had tabbed browsing for a while now in Safari. I almost never use it, simply because I can't see any real difference between using a series of tabs and a series of windows to show multiple pages at a time.
Would someone please try to explain what's the difference, and what's the big deal?
You can use tabs to add a layer of hierarchy to organise a large number of open pages.
For example, I might open a new browser window to view Slashdot, but then that will be my "Slashdot window", and any links within Slashdot I'll open in new tabs.
I'll generally leave the leftmost tab as the front page, and drag "read more" links to the 2nd tab. I'll drag comment links to tabs further to the right, opening, closing and reusing tabs to explore the discussion without losing key branch points. When I'm done with Slashdot, I only have one window to close.
The same approach works with Google results -- leave Google in the leftmost tab, drag results to tabs to see them. Firefox doesn't switch to the new tab automatically (unless you change preferences), so you can continue to drag possible good pages to new tabs, while the first ones are loading.
Good for The Hun too...
I don't get it. Really. I just don't get it.
Years ago, MS told us that the multiple-document interface was bad because users supposedly weren't able to deal with it. Then they stepped back and reintroduced it in their next office update. Now IE is going to get MDI in the only way that really is usable: with tabs.
But that's not the point that I'm not getting. Pondering the best, most usable solution is a good thing. Even if it takes a couple of years. Even if it's done by Microsoft. No. What I don't get is the apparent hypocrisy.
Whether a browser is safe and usable isn't only determined by such in-your-face features as boring ol' tabs. Have you ever tried to tweak IE's options? Whether you are a complete noob or somebody that has been admining Windows machines for the last ten years, the options dialog is one part of IE that makes you run away screaming for you mommy.
Options with labels that are hard to understand (to put it mildly) that are caved into a too small dialog that cannot be resized. I don't know how much of this is due to a very bad localization. But the German version actually features an option that you could back-translate to "Enable page transitions". Help item: "Determines whether Internet Explorer will blank the current page and display the next page when you leave a page." Huh?
If somebody really thinks that tabs might make IE a substantially better browser, he hasn't used it yet.
This inclusion of tabs in IE could be a blessing in disguise for the Firefox campaign. See, most people I know are reluctant to use FF because it's different. "Ooooh, but what does that do? It's too confusing..." etc. However, once IE takes it up, some users might gradually be introduced to a more Firefoxy way of doing things. Once this happens, it'll be easier to switch them. "See all those IE features? Well, if you use this program, you can keep them all but you won't get those annoying toolbars and malware! And it runs faster too!" In other words, by making IE more like Firefox, we make it easier to use Firefox instead of IE, as FF has all the features but less of the crap. Just my 2 cents.
Kinda defeats the whole purpose, doesn't it ?
Imply that they invented tabbed browsing and all the rest. They'll throw the word "innovation" around a lot.
Even more depressing: watch the MS fanbois eat it up.
Sessions, Mouse Gestures, User style sheets, and SVG
I think the blue screen of death might be original.
There's no place like ~/
The 'system restore' feature of windows was detecting that MS Messenger was missing, and 'fixing it'. As only an incompetent fool would want to delete msn messenger.
I think if you turned off system restore you could delete that and the pinball game.
Just be glad you werent auto-reported to the department of homeland security for being subversive.
..if FF supported a domain proxy (MS ISA) out of the box. Right now i get things working using APS but this is a one-user-only solution, and not a pretty one even.
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!!!
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
When I working in VS.net, I love to have all my code files on tabs because I have so many of them, and I am usually not working on more than one at a time (and if I am using two at once, I split the document pane)
With my web browser, I have never found the need to use tabs. In fact, tabs have often confused me because I wind up having two or three firefox windows each with a variety of tabs, and they aren't organized well. In VS.net, every window is a solution and the tabs are documents in that solution, but in a browser, there is no analogous divider, so I would like the ability to move tabs between windows.
Some poster above wanted tabs in all MS Office apps, this just proves that the concept of tabs could be universally applied to all applications... kind of like the taskbar! Think about it, tabs aren't any different than a taskbar, except they are nested one level deeper.
I propose a hierarchical, organizable taskbar. Rather than a hard and fast rule like "if the taskbar gets full, group like applications" I would like to be able to create groups and move windows into and out of groups. Applications should have API control over their own windows organization (user overridable of course), so VS.net could, for example, group applications by solution.
This solution eliminates the need to add tabs support to every single application and creates a common and more robust tab solution.
What does everyone think?
http://brandonbloom.name
Yeah, I realized that after I posted... Thing is, I still run Office 97 on my Win2K machine, but I switched my main desktop to Linux a LONG time ago.
The switch to SDI seems to have been driven by a combination of two factors -- dumb users and/or a poor user interface to MDI. Part of the problem with MDI is that Microsoft's implementation of it didn't have a visual metaphor. It was famously confusing for ordinary end users. People seem to adapt to tabbed browsing just fine, though, and the visual metaphor is the reason for that.
Perhaps the real reason that Microsoft has been slow to adapt tabs in IE is they realize how they screwed up in eliminating MDI, instead of just improving its interface. They want to postpone the inevitable day when they have to resurrect MDI with tabs, and the associated ribbing they'll get from the rest of the industry when they do that. If they delay long enough, they'll be able to spin it as an "innovation" in Office instead of correcting a mistake.
From the blog:
Is it confusing if IE has tabs, but other core parts of the Windows experience, like Windows Media Player or the shell, don't have tabs?
Um, What's been at the bottom of Excel for over a decade? Oh, excuse me, those are "worksheets", not "tabs". How could I be so insensitive?
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
it seems everyone who has replied so far hasnt used opera and wonders what's so great about it. (And one person who says he prefers firefox because it has a feature... which opera also has)
Firefox's tabbed browsing is a set of buttons with a tabbed look which swap the active URL (*I know it's not as simple as just that, no use pointing that out). Opera on the other hand is a full MDI- something which OSS programs seem to all be against for some reason (usually saying "the window manager should handle that"). The MDI allows you to resize individual windows (call the websites which pop-up small windows for logins poorly-designed, but they still exist, and it's helpful to support them), view multiple pages simultaneously under a single window, view pages at multiple resolutions (good for editing), basically it's multiple browser windows contained within another browser window. It really is much better done than Firefox's method (whether or not you prefer one or the other, Opera's you can do more with and you can still use it the way firefox works if you want to).
And just to get this out there: I dont use Opera. I used to, but switched to firefox when Opera starting crashing every five seconds (this is not a problem I've heard anyone else complain of)
I think Opera looks better (well, looked better, they tend to revamp the entire UI every release, it probably looks like a small nobbed ball covered in pulsating yellow fibers by now), and has a much better focus on usability. That's to be expected: It's a product for sale, it's going to have a better UI.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
If you are a developer, specifically a web developer, then Firefox and/or Mozilla are the best thing going to cross reference your pages.
Basically, the rule is, if it runs in Firefox, it runs everywhere. PLUS, the javascript errors actually tell you what is broken on your page, not the generic, useless JScript errors.
Then there's the javascript popup blocker taht actually WORKS. And the ability to instantly add or remove pages to allow popups.
And the profile manager. And the password manager, which is so much better than IE it's like claiming that driving a car is better than walking.
Funny how quickly MS's stance changes. I have 6 more months to go with my prediction. Let's see if I make it in time! :)
Features such as tabbed browsing are not important to IE users 11/12/04
Microsofts strategy is not innovation. It never has been.
What it has been doing, is to incorporate things in so that for 70 - 80 % of the people, things work fairly ok.
A friend of mine has been using XP for some time, and when I tried to convert him over to 10.3, he was like - why should I? Luna (the XP theme) is good enough for me.
I think this is the critical statement. Good enough. As soon as IE has few enough security holes that Microsoft Anti-Spyware can catch everything that sneaks through, what need has Joe User for Firefox?
Seriously. Think about it. On my XP box, I use ZoneAlarm. There is now a one-way firewall with SP2. I use Ad-Aware and Spybot, along with HijackThis. There is a beta-version of MS anti-Spyware available.
I also use something called Anti-Vir. Mostly because NAV was such a piece of bloatware. Now with rumours that there will be a MS branded antivirus program, tell me, which Joe User is going to keep a multitude of programs, each of which need to be updated seperately, instead of some Microsoft Security Program, which keeps 80-90% of all the Bad Stuff(tm) off their computer?
In one way, this is probably a good thing. It frees up resources which were previously going to fix security holes to develop cool new features. However, I am, personally a little concerned about the dominance of one company over so many diverse parts of the user-experience.
Ah well. There is always my Mac.
Take care, R.
'To Start Press Any Key'. Where's the ANY key? I see Esk, Catarl, and Pig-Up. There doesn't seem to be any ANY key. Woo! All this computer hacking is making me thirsty. I think I'll order a TAB.