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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."

24 of 748 comments (clear)

  1. Scared? by mfh · · Score: 5, Funny

    Average IE User:

    "My God! TABS! Eeeek!"
    (runs away from computer)

    --
    The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
    1. Re:Scared? by Aero · · Score: 5, Funny

      Of course tabs are scary. Look at which browsers use tabs:

      Mozilla -- Symbolized by a big red carnivorous lizard. Large carnivores are scary, and red things scream "DANGER!".
      Firefox -- Symbolized by...a burning fox. Burning things are scary.
      Opera -- Opera scares a lot of people, and many of those who aren't scared outright just plain don't understand it.

      And then there's IE. Either a big blue E or a harmless little butterfly. Non-threatening. But they're doing some eeeeevil genetic manipulation and taking something out of those scaaaaaary browsers to put into our harmless little IE!

      Of course it'll scare people.

      --
      We can believe in you for 3 minutes, but beyond that, even the King of All Cosmos can't be expected to wait.
    2. Re:Scared? by hostyle · · Score: 5, Informative

      Firefox - Ctrl Tab

      --
      Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
    3. Re:Scared? by trezor · · Score: 5, Informative

      If I have 20 Internet Explorer windows open, I can navigate between them using the Taskbar's "(20) Internet Explorer" collapsed button or with the ALT-TAB window switcher.

      Ever heard of CTRL-TAB? for switching windows inside a browser? Or any other standard-compliant application for that matter.

      Personally I prefer to be able to switch to another application when using ALT-TAB without having to go trough my 20 tabs before I get the app I want. But that may just be me. And my window-management is not thrown off in any way. On the contrary tabbed browsing has enhanched it.

      --
      Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
    4. Re:Scared? by Cro+Magnon · · Score: 5, Funny

      They don't scream "Eeeek". They scream "Ieeeee"!

      --
      Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
    5. Re:Scared? by justforaday · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's why I like how OS X handles this. Cmd-Tab to switch apps, Cmd-` to switch between windows within an app.

      --
      I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
  2. I am just so floored... by Pao|o · · Score: 5, Funny

    Pop up blocking, tabbed browsing and Anti-virus software. What will MS think off next?

    1. Re:I am just so floored... by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 5, Funny

      Just to nitpick, Netscape didn't stagnate, version 4 just sucked.

    2. Re:I am just so floored... by hankaholic · · Score: 5, Funny
      Opera fans can chime in here too, if they want.

      I'd assumed that chiming in when browsers are mentioned was part of Opera's EULA.
      --
      Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
  3. Love the spin by JebusIsLord · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  4. Office next? by Malfourmed · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "Initially, we had some concerns around complexity and consistency - will 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?"

    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.
  5. Cancel button after download by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. Share slipping... by bluprint · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  7. Somewhere in the future by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hey, look! This funny browser has tabs, just like in Internet Explorer!

  8. Re:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede by darkonc · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  9. whoopdy doo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  10. The real question by ceeam · · Score: 5, Funny

    Will it support CSS1? Is CSS2 support scheduled for IE8.0 or should we expect that later?

  11. Re:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede by Tim+C · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  12. My non-technical Father LOVES Tabs! by PenguinBoyDave · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  13. Re:I don't Comprendo. by I+confirm+I'm+not+a · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

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    This is where the serious fun begins.
  14. Re:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede by jyoull · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  15. Now that THAT'S out of the way... by bujoojoo · · Score: 5, Funny

    Maybe they'll starting working on standards compliance.

    --
    This space for rent
  16. Re:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede by Perl-Pusher · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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 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.

  17. Re:IE, Idiots Explorer by Mind+Booster+Noori · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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