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."

Scared?

[mfh]

Average IE User:

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

I am just so floored...

[Pao|o]

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

Patents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has Microsoft patented it yet?

Somewhere in the future

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

MS continues to innovate and innovate.

After only recently introducing the new killer feature "pop-up blocking", MS in all its glory continues its push to innovate even further with the introduction of yet an other killer feature "tabs".

This just shows that MS is, despite all the naysayers, still a force to be reckoned with when it comes to innovation and all out quality.

Now I only hope that they did already patent these great ideas, so that they can enjoy the fruits of their continues struggle for excellence, without being ripped of by some small Norwegian company or, worse still, some open source fanatics.

Re:Scared?

[Aero]

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.

Re:Scared?

[DenDave]

And in other news... Longhorn will have a file system, we don't know what exactly or when but we are sure it will have one....

sorta sounds like...

this old joke [attrition.org]

The real question

[ceeam]

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

Re:I am just so floored...

[Joseph Vigneau]

Not sure.. Let's see [apple.com]:

• RSS aggregator
• Bookmark search (probably not 'til Longhorn)
• Privacy Mode^W^W (I don't expect MS to copy this one)

And maybe [mozilla.org]:

• Better extension support
• Better theme support

MS innovation, at it's best!

Opera fans can chime in here too, if they want.

Re:Scared?

[Cro Magnon]

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

Re:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede

[jyoull]

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.

Now that THAT'S out of the way...

[bujoojoo]

Maybe they'll starting working on standards compliance.

Re:Scared?

[mo^]

I've had some great blue E's in my life ya know.... i can certainly see the attraction....

though i must say most nights with blue e's were finshed in style in the company of a fox and firing up a doobie .....

(warning... some poetic license/geek fantasy may have slipped into the latter stages of this)

Re:Scared?

[Tibor the Hun]

He's a power freaking IE user.
He doesn't need no ctrl-tab.

Yes, mods, that's a flame... But at the same time it's true.

Re:I am just so floored...

[Dr. Evil]

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

Re:Scared?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, it must suck to own a computer with no mouse.

Re:Share slipping...

[Horrortaxi]

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

They've slipped to a meager 90% of the market share. Woe is Microsoft.

"What, you mean we have to do a little work to maintain our monopoly? WORK? What part of "MONOPOLY" don't they understand? You don't have a monopoly so that you can do work! This sucks. Okay, give em tabbed browsing, that ought to shut them up."

Re:Scared?

[ASkGNet]

Yes, it switches between open tabs.

Would you like cheese with that whine?

Re:Share slipping...

[Anonymous Coward]

But remember, people want IE to die a violent death, possibly involving some sort of large mammle and a tub of glue. But seriously, the issue some people have is that Microsoft are great at copying and overwhelming, but not leading. If you're stranded on a desert island with all the materials to make a boat, don't you make the boat and leave? Not Microsoft, they wait for you to sail by, then they take your boat.

Watch MS...

[dmaxwell]

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.

Re:Scared?

[generic-man]

Well, I downloaded and installed a few programs that supplement my conventional MSN search results with leveraged search results from some of the leading search engines out there.

I also click on a few pop-up ads a day, just to keep my favorite web sites going. I wouldn't want to be stealing web content, now would I?

You want to know what's weird? I usually get up to 25 browser windows just by going to msn.com -- even when I'm not connected to the Internet!

Re:I am just so floored...

[hankaholic]

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.

Re:Somewhere in the future

[dalleboy]

Don't laugh too hard, I'm sure it's already happened: Hey, look! This Xerox has a GUI, just like Mac!

Re:tabs in firefox

[bmalia]

I think the blue screen of death might be original.

That was System Restore

[steve_l]

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.

Re:Share slipping...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lazy? Microsoft is a business. Businesses have a goal, make money. Microsoft does this very well.

They are still lazy. Just because they are greedy too doesn't make them less lazy. I know you are confused by the greed is good ethic. A contradiction is always a big problem in a logic system.

Re:Somewhere in the future

[rob_squared]

You win, you have the better example, but unless everyone goes and sees Pirates of Silicon Valley, most meager humans won't catch the reference. Now why haven't we been modded up yet?

Re:Scared?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL that's funny! You had loads of open tabs and then you had no tabs and then you had to re-open all your tabs! How long did it take you to re-open them all? I'll bet it was a total drag. Was it a drag? I bet you hope you never do it again!

Fucking cretin.

Re:Scared?

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, Microsoft! With this new feature, IE users will at last be dragged, kicking and screaming, to the cutting edge of three years ago.

don't forget the incredible new opportunity for ie users to now download spyware off of multiple websites from a single browser window! now that's innovation!

microsoft's current development track record should have ie7 on target for a 2012 release date. plenty of time for folks to switch over to firefox instead.

Re:Office next?

[jafac]

I would LOVE to see a robust tabbed implementation in Office, especially if (like Firefox) you could run multiple instances of a tabbed application.

Excel has tabs. . .
(that's sarcasm. I'm shooting for Funny here)

Re:Scared?

[Anonymous Coward]

Along with Konquerer, Safari,... It would be shorter to list modern browsers that don't have tabbed browsing:

• Internet Explorer

Re:Scared?

[Anonymous Coward]

" It's the main reason why I don't use Firefox.. I don't even want to see the options for tabs."

That has got to be the most idiotic comment I have ever witnessed - and yes, I have read slashdot before :)

It would be interesting to meet a person who doesn't use Firefox because it has an option for tabs, but I doubt anyone is actually that messed up.

Obligatory...

[ArAgost]

'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.

Re:Scared?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Linux symbol is a cute cartoon penguin. For Microsoft, the symbol right now is a fat guy in a skintight butterfly suit. Which mascot is more appealing? "

Re:Scared?

[SamSim]

Perhaps they've fixed this since Win98 which is what I'm using, but I find windows in the Alt+Tab list are ordered by how recently they were used, so you'd get something more like:

Alt+Tab Excel - no.
Alt+Tab Firefox - no.
Alt+Tab Excel again - no.
Alt+Tab Firefox again - no.
Alt+Tab Excel again - no.
Alt+Tab Firefox again - no.
...

Re:Scared?

[Anonymous Coward]

> It would be interesting to meet a person who doesn't use Firefox because it has an option for tabs, but I doubt anyone is actually that messed up.

Don't work with management types, do you?

Re:Scared?

[mattyrobinson69]

One browser crash takes them all out anyway (i have to use IE at college to get to firefox download page).