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."

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.

Turn off-able?

[fyrewulff]

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.

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.

What style of tabbed browsing will IE7 use?

[Lord Bitman]

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.)

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.

Duh

[poopdeville]

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.

Fabulous New Innovation

[mcsporran]

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

Never gonna happen man

[colonslashslash]

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!

I agree wholeheartadly, but the main reason Internet Explorer dominates 85 - 95% of the market (depending on who you ask) is that it is bundled with Windows, and not really removable. I've noticed that even when I recommend Firefox to Windows users, they eventually go back to using IE, partly because it's "just there" and won't sod off.

Because of this, and aside from the technical reasons, I don't think Microsoft have any motivation to enable IE to be uninstalled easily though Add/Remove programs.

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:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede

[gbjbaanb]

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.

Re:Cancel button after download

[nanter]

A better question is - Knowing what you appear to know about IE's inadequacies, why are you using IE at all?

Re:Cancel button after download

[badfish99]

This shouldn't be modded "funny". It's a much worse design flaw than not having tabbed browing.
If a popup can grab the focus like that, a malicious program that needs user interaction to do its badness could keep on popping up dialogs until it gets lucky and the user just happens to be hitting the "Y" key at the same time.

I don't Comprendo.

[kniLnamiJ-neB]

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.

Re:I am just so floored...

[BorgHunter]

Full PNG and CSS2 support, hopefully. Gee whiz, doesn't Microsoft just have the most original ideas for IE? Wherever would we be without their browser innovation?

Ironically, IE used to be exactly like Firefox: Up against a monster behemoth (Netscape) which was starting to stagnate, and fall in quality a bit. I find it odd that they didn't learn from that experience, and instead decided to rest on their laurels after stomping Netscape. They really should have seen Firefox (or something similar) coming, especially as IE hasn't really had any new development since 5.0 or so, save periodic security patches and such.

But anyway, competition is good! I hope IE does continue to try to put features in IE. Maybe Firefox can force Microsoft into keeping it up-to-date.

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.

Re:whoopdy doo

[the_2nd_coming]

how about just CSS1?

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:Office next?

[0xbeefcake]

You can already use 'tabs' in Excel, they're called 'worksheets'.

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:Office next?

[nuggetman]

That's notebook view, the tabs represent different sections in the notebook. It's not separate documents open in tabs.

Re:My non-technical Father LOVES Tabs!

[Turd Rippleton]

Once again Microsoft demonstrates that they are very out of touch with the average computer user.

Are they really? Microsoft has waited a long time to release a new browser. During this time they have seen what people like in other browsers and are adding those features to IE7; hence making them in-touch with the average computer user.

IE, Idiots Explorer

[DrSoCold]

IE is absolutely rubbish and so out of date. I cannot believe that people still download and use it with so much other competition around. Firefox absolutely wipes the floor with it and I am not 100% keen on Firefox!

I have to use IE on my Uni PC's and it chuckles me when I see people click on a link and get blasted with new Windows and popups, it is an absolute joke and should be dumped by all. If there were awards for the worst pieces of software ever written then I believe the IE series would scoop the lot.

Internet Exploring for those who do not know better.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Mind Booster Noori]

Because it's more user friendly to have one window with 6 tabs than to have 6 windows (mixed with the others)?

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

Re:Share slipping...

[Per Abrahamsen]

The implied meaning is that Microsoft doesn't improve their products on its own, but only when competition force it to do so.

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:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede

[drsmithy]

Do you think the "Average Joe" cares whether the back-end http proto handlers are reused by every app or not? Heck, even if it is, the morons behind IE should have had the tiniest sense to ask themselves whether it should be that way...

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.

Re:What's the big deal?

[mbaciarello]

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.

Robust & Microsoft in the same sentence?

[crovira]

You're joking... Right?

-The BSOD

Re:Allow users to uninstall and reinstall as neede

[drsmithy]

Back in the day, every app could load up its own copy [...]

Kinda defeats the whole purpose, doesn't it ?

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.

Re:Scared?

[rhendershot]

tabbed browsing is critical for managing hierarchical retrieval of hypertext resources. Beyond opening results from google in their own document, many web pages contain links to external pages and to internal anchors. Those should not be read linearly as IE6 forces you to do (link, link, link, back, back, second link, etc.) Tabs allow you to open them individually and view them with your OWN sequence!

or are you just trolling?

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?

[Atzanteol]

You could, uh, click on Firefox (or alt-tab to it), then the tab you want (or ctrl-tab to it)? Not much different from clicking on the "IE" group, and selecting the instance of IE you want really. But then again, you don't *need* to use tabs in Firefox. Just don't use them if you don't like them? Or group similar pages in each window via tabs? Like a Firefox window for Tech News, one for stuff you're searching for, etc.

The point is, you have a *lot* of choice. Asking your average slashdotter will get you no where.

Proposed tab solution

[SnprBoB86]

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?

Re:How is that different from MDI?

[alienmole]

Both of these applications went SDI a LONG time ago.

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.

Re:Scared?

[sconeu]

MS Apps that use tabs:

Excel
Visual Studio

Re:Tabbed brainwash

[RupW]

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.

Twaddle. The IE rendering engine is modular, which is why everything uses it, which is why everyone complains "it's a part of the OS". Visual Studio.NET, for example, has tabs that can contain IE controls - you can use it in effect as a tabbed browser. Ditto recent versions of HTML help.

Re:Scared?

[hackstraw]

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

Thats nice, but a tabbed browser that does not tell you in the status bar if the link you are following will open up a new window or not is useless in my opinion. Now why oh why do web designers feel the compulsion to put every damn link in a new window is another question. What's even worse is when they open up all the new links with the same name so if you are daring enough to want to open up more than one window at a time the last one always wins.

Yes, but

[rathehun]

See the point which is getting lost here, among the euphoria of Firefox getting to 50 mil and Opera swimming across the stormy ocean and all, is one which was brought up a long time ago ~ 2001/2002, is this.

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.

Re:Cancel button after download

[Anonymous Coward]

It's especially annoying when I have enough space on the drive to download a file, but not enough space to download a file to a temporary directory and then copy it to a new directory on the same drive.

It's especially annoying when my temp directory doesn't have enough space to download the file, but the drive I told IE to put the file on does have enough space to hold the file, and IE fails to download the file because the temp directory can't hold it!

Retarded monkeys designed IE, I'm sure of it.

Re:Share slipping...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares if the unknowing masses get a mistaken impression that MS invented tabbed browsing. What should MS do, put a disclaimer on the splash screen that states that Moz had it first, with links to mozilla.org (their competitor)? For that matter, the unknowing masses themselves could probably give a rat's ass who came up with the idea first. I don't see Gnome or KDE developers giving shoutouts to MS for every Windows-ism (or Mac-ism) that they incorporate into their desktops. I don't see anyone screaming about how evil Apple is for not giving enough credit to Xerox or Englebart. The only people who care about who came up with what first already know the truth. People who get their panties in a major wad over how MS doesn't give credit where its due already hate MS and are scrambling for more things to hate about them. There's plenty of things to dislike about MS but this isn't one of them. Good ideas get copied all the time in software, be glad that they're changing their mind about it, instead of being buttheads and continuing to insist that no one really wants or needs tabbed browsing.