Internet Explorer 7.0 to Include Tabbed Browsing

[Haruko]

Internet Explorer 7.0 to Include Tabbed Browsing

by Scott Bekker

May 17, 2005

Internet Explorer 7.0 will include the tabbed browsing feature already present in several rival browsers, including Firefox, Opera and Netscape, Microsoft developers confirmed this week.

"Yes, IE7 has tabs," said Internet Explorer product unit manager Dean Hachamovitch, who then cautioned customers not to expect much in the technical beta of IE 7.0 scheduled for mid-summer. "The tabbed browsing experience in the upcoming IE7 beta is pretty basic. Expect additional end-user functionality to come in after the beta."

IE 7.0 is a new version of the world's most-used browser that will work on computers running Windows XP Service Pack 2. Until recently, Microsoft had not planned to release a new version of Internet Explorer until the next version of Windows, code-named "Longhorn." In February, however, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates unveiled plans for the new version of IE.

With the original announcement, Microsoft limited discussion of technologies coming in the new version to security enhancements. Even late last month at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, IE product managers deflected questions about tabbed browsing, which is one of the most popular features of rival browsers, especially the surging Firefox browser.

Hachamovitch made his comments this week in a posting on Microsoft's official IEBlog. Hachamovitch reiterated the team's security focus in his discussion of tabbed browsing. "The main goal for tabs in our beta release is to make sure our implementation delivers on compatibility and security," he wrote.

Hachamovitch suggested complexity and consistency concerns led to Microsoft's original decision not to include tabbed browsing in IE a few years ago. "Will it confuse users more than it benefits them? Is it confusing if IE has tabs, but other core parts of the Windows experience, like Windows Media Player or the shell, don’t have tabs? I think we made the wrong decision here initially, and we’re making the right one now," he said.

In the same post, Hachamovitch pointed out that users with older versions of Windows currently have options for tabbed browsing through third-party plug-ins and toolbars. He also said the MSN toolbar will be updated in the next few months to support tabbed browsing within IE.

Other confirmed features of IE 7.0 so far include support for the alpha channel in PNG images and an effort to fix Cascading Style Sheet consistency problems.

Tabbed browsing being such an awesome feature, this really doesn't come as much of a surprise to me.

[Vendetta]

I like the way they're describing fixing CSS and PNG as a "feature" rather than a "fix".

Anyway, living in the past still, the future's bright. The future's Opera.

[General Zod]

internet explorer can go fuck itself. firefox, mozilla and opera have had tabbed browsing well before they had. fuck if i switch back.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Yes, get IE7 and you too can go back in time to see what the very first Mozilla builds were like.

I think I'll stick with Firefox v1.04 to be honest.

[Comosicus]

I can only hope that it would follow standards to a greater extent than it does today. As a web developer I have a lot of problems sometime to get things right.

And it will still take a long time till it will get the market share IE 6 has today so that my life can get easier.

EDIT: Post #1500. Hooray!

[Uraniun235]

internet explorer can go fuck itself. firefox, mozilla and opera have had tabbed browsing well before they had. fuck if i switch back.

I don't think Microsoft has your demographic in mind when they do this, so I suspect the sentiment is somewhat mutual.

[Stark]

U-235 is right: most people I know switched browsers for tabs, not security, functionality, download managers, or whatever. It's the most visible difference between IE and everything else. Doubtless MS will run a massive campaign on the 'new exciting breakthrough in IE', but 80% of people have never even HEARD of non-IE browsers, and they'll lap it all up.