Browser Tabs -- do you really need them?

[wit>trope]

When I first was exposed, I fell in love with them but now I'm back to Internet Explorer and I find that tabs are useless and in fact more bad than good when:

1. You auto-hide your task bar
2. You give the task bar a depth of at least 3

Using these 2 options you effectively have tabs on your task bar with the seperate windows grouped according to application. These windows never end up getting collapsed into a single rectangle because with a task bar depth of 3 or more, you have plenty of room. So tabs are useless in this case. Furthermore, with the auto-hide on, the tabs end up taking more room than necessary.

If I go with a non-IE browser, I will use Opera. Firefox I am convinced will be more and more "dumbed down" in order to compete with IE.

 

[Plexus]

Tabs are awesome, and I don't feel like messing with my taskbar to achieve whatever you have going.

As to Firefox being dumbed down: where the hell did you get that idea?

 

[wit>trope]

It's just like with games. For a game maker to attract a certain wider demographic they sometimes have to dumb it down (make it less complicated, etc.). Some game makers choose to just serve a niche market that likes non-dumbed down games. Firefox is not looking to just serve a niche market. They want to compete with IE. So they will have to dumb their product down more and more.

Changing the task bar is easy. You just click and drag to give it a depth of 3 and you can use the Control Panel to make it autohide.

 

[vbraun]

Why should I deny myself Tabs? They make things easier, and my desktop less crowded. Plus its just annoying having 3 or 4 windows open.

 

[Dell19]

I tend to not have the "group similar taskbar buttons" option on and I don't find tabs in firefox particularily useful because its easier to have one taskbar to switch between programs.

 

[MarineCorps]

When I first was exposed, I fell in love with them but now I'm back to Internet Explorer and I find that tabs are useless and in fact more bad than good when:

1. You auto-hide your task bar
2. You give the task bar a depth of at least 3

Using these 2 options you effectively have tabs on your task bar with the seperate windows grouped according to application. These windows never end up getting collapsed into a single rectangle because with a task bar depth of 3 or more, you have plenty of room. So tabs are useless in this case. Furthermore, with the auto-hide on, the tabs end up taking more room than necessary.

If I go with a non-IE browser, I will use Opera. Firefox I am convinced will be more and more "dumbed down" in order to compete with IE.

Tabs are so much better. I once had 20 tabs opened at once and the browser window didn't have to be shrunk

 

[Zelig]

Why should I deny myself Tabs? They make things easier, and my desktop less crowded. Plus its just annoying having 3 or 4 windows open.

Hah, I'll usually have 3 or 4 Opera windows open with a number of tabs in each.

2GB of ram + dual monitors is great.

 

[Civrules]

I can't live without tabs on FireFox. One of my most favorite features.

 

[Gogf]

One of the things I really love about Firefox compared to Opera is how it looks. The tabs look much less static, and the responding time for closing/opening a tab is much less. I also hate that little "X"s on my tabs in Opera.

Changing from one tab to another with ctrl-tab, and shift-ctrl-tab (apple-option-right and apple-option-left) in Firefox is much easier than alt-tabbing from one window to another. You also can't close or open a window my middle-clicking it.

 

[Zelig]

One of the things I really love about Firefox compared to Opera is how it looks. The tabs look much less static, and the responding time for closing/opening a tab is much less. I also hate that little "X"s on my tabs in Opera.

Not sure what you mean by looking less static and if that's a good or bad thing...

In Firefox holding the open tab key for 5 seconds gave me 104 tabs, doing the same in Opera gave 137 tabs. Furthermore, in Firefox tabs kept opening for a couple seconds of unresponsiveness after I released the keys while they were all open immeadiatly in Opera. Granted this wasn't a very rigorous test, but I honestly can't see anything to indicate that the current version of Firefox is any faster at opening/closing tabs than Opera.

I also hate those little "X"s, which is why I took the time to go to Preferences and on the first panel, uncheck the "Show close button on each tab" box.

 

[Speedo]

Changing from one tab to another with ctrl-tab, and shift-ctrl-tab (apple-option-right and apple-option-left) in Firefox is much easier than alt-tabbing from one window to another. You also can't close or open a window my middle-clicking it.

Or better yet in Opera, hold the RMB and use the scroll wheel.

 

[wit>trope]

Tabs are so much better. I once had 20 tabs opened at once and the browser window didn't have to be shrunk

If you set your taskbar to a depth of 3, then you will be able to have about that many windows open without any of them being collapsed (exactly how many depends on factors like whether you use Quick Launch, etc). And this taskbar on autohide takes up NO space unlike the tabs which take up some space. So using this method is a win-win situation.

 

[MarineCorps]

If you set your taskbar to a depth of 3, then you will be able to have about that many windows open without any of them being collapsed (exactly how many depends on factors like whether you use Quick Launch, etc). And this taskbar on autohide takes up NO space unlike the tabs which take up some space. So using this method is a win-win situation.

Tabs also tell you when the website has finshed loaded.

 

[wit>trope]

Tabs also tell you when the website has finshed loaded.

OK, I guess that's one thing tabs have going for them. So it's a trade off between the extra space and this one minor feature

Also, if a taskbar depth of 3 is not sufficient, you can always just increase it to 4 or whatever number is necessary to prevent those windows from collapsing. But I've found that 3 works just fine.

I don't see what's wrong with Alt-Tab (you can press SHIFT-Alt-Tab for it to go in the opposite direction). With a Power Toy from Microsoft, you can also have it give a visual thumbnail preview.

 

[Comraddict]

great for research on on subject, i.e. one subject per one window.

 

[Turner]

I love tabs, myself. While I could do without them, I find it easier to have them.

 

[Mise]

It's also easier to get windows in new tabs, i.e. you just have to type the web address into the address bar and hit enter and it comes up on a new window. Closing tabs is also easier (middle click as opposed to right click -> close).

Also, if you hide the taskbar, the tray icon is hidden as well, so it's more difficult to find the time (i.e. glancing to the bottom right corner of the screen instead of looking at your watch).

 

[Grisu]

If you set your taskbar to a depth of 3, then you will be able to have about that many windows open without any of them being collapsed (exactly how many depends on factors like whether you use Quick Launch, etc). And this taskbar on autohide takes up NO space unlike the tabs which take up some space. So using this method is a win-win situation.

except that then your taskbar either takes up a big portion of your screen, or you have to set it to auto-hide, which I absolutely hate...I'll stay with the tabs, thank you, but they aren't even the main reason why I use Firefox.

 

[DreadCthulhu]

I like tabs a lot - I tend to have a 100 or so web pages open at once at any given time, which is just unmanagable while using the taskbar alone. With Firefox, I tend to have 15-20 pages open in 5-6 windows (one for Slashdot, one for this site, another for webcomics, ect) and it works pretty well.

 

[wit>trope]

It's also easier to get windows in new tabs, i.e. you just have to type the web address into the address bar and hit enter and it comes up on a new window.

This is not related to tabs. You can do the SAME EXACT THING without tabs using things like the Google tool bar (in the Options you set it to always open a new window when typing in something and pressing enter -- if you type in a web address, it will open up the website in a new window)