Re: A Brief Question about Firefox Browser

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 4770

Posted by srdiamond15
2005-12-19 17:09:07

As a tabs policy, it seems to me there are really only two rational options: 1) Open links in the same window; 2) Open links in the background (preferably the way iRider does it, i.e. forcing them that way).

It seems to me all the tabbed browsers are terribly convoluted about this. One exception is iRider, of course, but that’s true necessarily, as there’s nothing to be convoluted about. Only one of the rational options is implemented.

(Not a bad idea, when you have scrolling tabs, like only iRider and NetCaptor do, unless you count Firefox with the controversial TBE extension.)

The other exception to the rule that the most basic setting of all is presented in a fragmented and convoluted fashion (Opera being the worst offender, Netcaptor second worst) may surprise. It is the MSN Search Toolbar with Tabbed Browsing used with IE6. It provides just this choice with a toolbar button whose state is “Stop Opening Links in Tabs.”

(Unfortunately, the implementation is currently quite weak, in that you cannot sometimes stop the Primary Evil of tabbed browsing, opening pages in new windows instead of tabs.)

Tabbed browsing capabilities are only one part of browser usability for knowledge management purposes. The other major part is interoperability. For me, the most important thing is to have tabs. I couldn’t imagine going back to plain old IE6. But once tabs are available in some good enough way (which for me seems to be the current MSN toolbar implementation but not the Microgarden IE6 implementation) after that, interoperability becomes a lot more important than tabbed browsing refinements. So I now find myself using the tabbed version of IE6. It integrates directly with Ultra Recall and even more importantly for me with MS OneNote (this in two ways by two MS “powertoys”).

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