(no subject)

[listersgirl]

I downloaded Firefox (because I am a sheep!). Can someone tell me what's so exciting about tabbed browsing? I can't see how it's any different from having multiple windows open, but they seem so very excited about it.

Comments

[kylegirl.livejournal.com]

It's just... better! It only takes up one thingy on your menu bar. It's much easier to manage when you have lots of pages open at once; I don't think it makes much difference if you usually only have a couple of windows open. But when you get up to ten, fifteen, twenty pages, it makes a big difference.

[listersgirl]

Hmm, I guess - I mean, I usually have at least 10 windows open at once, but they're all grouped together (at least all the internet pages) so the menu bar stays clean, and I can just alt-tab through them. I'll have to try it and see how it feels.

[tinkerer.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Ooh! Let me be first to evangelize!

Tabbed browsing is wonderful because in one window, you can have tabs showing all of your browsing windows. You can move between them within one (outer) window, which means (a) a lot less clutter on your task bar, and (b) all of the titles are showing.

(a) is important to me, because I might open six or seven links at a time (easily... this is what I do, for instance, as I read the headlines in the morning). But if I have other things on the go (because, for some reason, they don't actually pay me to browse headlines), then everything else isn't swamped by what would otherwise be a half-dozen applications in the taskbar.

The solution that a lot of people have adopted to this taskbar clutter is to turn on the Windows grouping of applictions (which I do, too). However, this leads to (b) — it's much less of a pain to see what each tab contains when the titles are actually showing. Also, they're maintained in a constant order... something which Windows has decided is unimportant.


There are other benefits, such as shunting that which would otherwise open in a new window into a new tab instead. But you have to like tabbed browsing for this to be considered a plus...

WRT Firefox overall, between the extensions and the skins, there is a lot more than tabbed browsing that makes it so good. :)

[tinkerer.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Ooh! Let me be first to evangelize!

d'oh... second...

[listersgirl]

Obviously I need to look around more, because I have yet to find anything (other than the promise of less nastiness) that seems much different. And it's kind of irritating me that I have to do two steps - one to alt-tab to get back to the firefox pages from the other stuff that I'm working on, and one to get to the actual page that I need. We'll see - it's still very new to me. :)

[sarcasma.livejournal.com]

I think you want to poke around on the Firefox site and look at the plugins that enhance tabbed browsing. Also, your experience with window clustering in XP is way better than mine for some reason; at work, I can have six MSN conversations going on and five IE windows open (shut up, they're totally for work) and they don't always group the way they're supposed to. With tabbed browsing in FF it's guaranteed.

Other things I like about Firefox: my kittycat icons and speed (at work, it seems to be less of a system hog than IE; at home, that's not always the case for some reason).

[listersgirl]

I have noticed that it's slower with the loading, especially with graphics, but not so much that it matters.

I mean, I like it, and I've been using it all week, I just have yet to feel the miraculousness.

[sarcasma.livejournal.com]

I doubt you will. It's a good program, basta. Remember that a lot of computer things -- programs, OS, chip preferences -- are basically religion.

Personally, since our protections at work are not that hot, the miracle is being able to surf at all without ending up with an infected computer. :p

[marginalia.livejournal.com]

i love it because i'm anal about my task bar and because i like to have at least three windows open at a time - flist and email or news and email depending if i am at home or work. and then everything mentioned above. right now i have eleven tabs open and it is just so much cleaner. i despise (and disable) windows grouping, but tabbed browsing is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

i could go on about other great firefox things like bookmarking groups of tabs or adblock or bugmenot or how you can google with a mouseclick or keyboard shortcut from just about anywhere and add in quicksearches for stuff like the imdb and wikipedia and amazon :)

[listersgirl]

Oh, see, I love windows grouping because it keeps the task bar cleaner - because, yeah, I usually find that I have 10-20 windows open at a time, plus all my other applications. And the bookmarking would be great, but I do all my bookmarking in My Yahoo, because I like to carry my bookmarks with me. I do like googling from every page, though, and the quicksearches I will definitely have to look into, because that sounds like fun.

[sh1mm3r.livejournal.com]

Also there are the live bookmarks. I can look to see if my friends list on LJ has been updated, and what is coming in my Netflix queue, without going to the actual sites.

Woo for that!

[linaerys.livejournal.com]

I like firefox because I do a lot of javascript development and their debugging works well, aside from that, well, I don't even LIKE tabbed browsing.

[starfishchick]

I am following this conversation with much interest - I have been thinking of going to FF for a while, now, but wasn't sure I got the big whoop. You'll have to tell us how it's going!

[protoainsley.livejournal.com]

I LOVE tabbed browsing, because it's easier for me to see what's open than with IE's grouping. I don't alt-tab, because then you have to go in order, and I skip around a lot.

I'd stick with it even if I did not like it (you can always open things in different windows, as you so far prefer) because it's NOT MICROSOFT!!!

[listersgirl]

Oh, yeah, I'm happy to use it (mostly for the protections against random crap), I was just wondering if there was something I was missing.

I think because I usually have about 6 or 7 different programs open, as well as multiple browser windows, my experience is just a bit different.