Progress

Progress comrades, progress.

I was just sitting here, pretending to do work (I've become quite good at that) and was thinking about browser technology and switching between windows. As you do. And I'm trying to imagine a world without tabbed browsing. It's hard. There are definite advantages to non-tabbed browsing. Alt-tabbing between applications would be easier. I keep going to do that when all I really want to do is go to a different tab. Which in firefox (on a mac) is command-number of the tab. 

Can you tell I like my shortcuts?

The problem with that particular shortcut is it doesn't work in Safari, my new browser of choice. That is command-shift and then left or right to change. Not my favourite way of dealing with things, but it does work. 

Which doesn't really answer the question. Is tabbed browsing better? Yes, but not intuitively. When you're only using one browser to view pages, yes. You can see all the pages you have open on the screen instead of cluttering up the task bar. But I find it difficult when I'm trying to do work online (CMS's you see) and I have other applications open. Remembering to change between tabs and between windows often throws me, making me wish sometimes for windows. But then there would be so many windows open that alt-tabbing to the right window would be harder. Although you can use the mouse to select the one you want if you leave the alt key down. Which defeats the purpose of a shortcut doesn't it? 

So there you have it, a non-indepth analysis of the benefit of tabbed browsing. It's good and it's hear to stay. It's also the reason I don't use Internet Explorer anymore. Since I still need to support IE6, I need that. It has no tabs. You can't have both 7 and 6 installed on the same computer, meaning I don't get to use 7. So firefox is used most. Doesn't work to well on a mac, hence Safari. So, no tabs in IE6, which I've come to rely on, and MS's decision to not allow you to run both 6 and 7 on the same PC have driven me to Safari, the least friendly of the tabbed browsers. Hmmm.