David's Blog

I really like the new taskbar in Windows 7.

One of the byproducts of the new taskbar: tabbed browsing is obsolete.

Tabbed browsing was great when your window manager was overwhelmed with large numbers of internet browser windows. However, the Windows 7 taskbar works great with large numbers of open windows.

Tabbed browsing is actually worse than Windows 7’s taskbar application management. Why?

1. With each browser window in a separate application, you can quickly ALT-TAB between the last two important apps. With tabbed browsing, you cannot use ALT-TAB to move between web browser sessions because all the tabs happen in a single app.
2. Similarly, holding down ALT-TAB shows you thumbnails of all the open applications so you can quickly go to the application you want via a mouse click. This doesn’t work with tabbed browsing for the reason above.
3. Tabbed browsing takes up extra screen space for the tab row. You can disable tab browsing and see more content.
4. Windows 7 makes it easy to see applications side-by-side via Aero Snap. This works great if you disable tabbed browsing, doesn’t work at all with tabbed browsing.
5. With tabbed browsing disabled, you can adjust the window size per browser session. Only use the screen space you need! Also, using different sizes for different session makes finding a session easier via Aero Peek.
6. If you change Windows 7’s default taskbar setting to “Combine when taskbar is full”, you can glance down at your taskbar and select the browser session you want by the title text, just like you can with tabbed browsing. To change this taskbar setting (which I recommend changing): right click start button->properties->taskbar->taskbar buttons: [Combine when taskbar is full]
7. For developers: You get Aero Peek for free if you do not use tabbed browsing. If you do use tabbed browsing, you must write a Windows 7 plug-in to make Aero Peek work for all the open tabs (IE had to do this, all web browsers that support tabbed browsing *should* do this if they want to function correctly in Windows 7).
8. To quickly open another web browser session, just middle mouse click on any browser button in the taskbar. This option is available even when you are not currently working in a web browser (i.e. no need to switch to web browser and find the “open new tab” button).
9. To quickly kill browser sessions, just hover on a browser button in the taskbar, then middle click on any thumbnail. As a visual queue, you get thumbnails of all the open browser sessions. Once you mouse over the session you want to kill, you see the web page in its entirety before making a decision to kill it.
10. Tabbed browsing is partially duplicating what the taskbar already does…why learn two different ways of doing essentially the same thing?

To disable tabbed browsing in IE: Tools->Internet Options->General->Tabs->Settings->[ ] Enable Tabbed Browsing (requires restarting Internet Explorer)

For Firefox, use: Tools->Options…->Tabs->[ ] Open new windows in a new tab instead

Posted on March 13, 2010 12:55 PM | Permalink| Comments (9)