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How to... |
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 How
do I use tabbed browsing in IE7
Firefox has long had tabbed browsing, and in fact
that is the single feature that has gained it the
market share it has among browsers (anywhere between
10 and 40% of browser users, depending on who you
believe). In any event, now IE7 is out and it
also has tabbed browsing. Since IE7 is
compatible with Blackboard, and Firefox versions
since 1.0 have not been compatible, we will cover
the use of tabbed browsing in the approved browser
in this article.
For those of you completely new to tabbed
browsing, it is a feature within the browser which
permits simultaneously open web pages "located" on a
system of tabs within the overall browser window.
No longer do you have to guess at which browser
session is represented by a confusing set of icons
on the taskbar. To access any of the open web
pages, simply click its tab:
Any tab acts like an independent browser window,
but the power of tabbed browsing is in having
multiple tabs containing the various web sites you
are using for your research open simultaneously.
It makes it extremely easy to click back and forth
between sites when gathering materials or searching
for information. If you click on a standard
link on a tabbed page, the link will open in that
tab, but if you Ctrl-click the link, it will open in
a new tab of its own (clicking it with the middle
mouse button (or wheel) will do the same thing).
Any tab can be closed by clicking the little X on
the tab itself, or clicking the tab anywhere with
the middle mouse button (or wheel). To close
all but the current tab, press Ctrl-Alt-F4.
Another way to open a new page on a tab of its
own is to click the new tab button and then open the
page in the standard manner (ie, type its address in
the address bar, pick it from the drop-down list on
the address bar, pick it from your favorites (Ctrl-I
opens the new "favorites center"), press Ctrl-O then
type its URL, etc). A shortcut to opening a
new tab is to press Ctrl-T.
If you are searching with the new IE7 search box,
pressing Alt-Enter after your search term will open
the search results on a new tab. This can be
especially useful. You can open search result
links on new tabs to evaluate them, and easily
return to your search results tab without having to
backtrack multiple pages.
An extremely convenient feature of tabbed
browsing is the ability to save a group of tabs
which can then be opened simultaneously. To do
so, first open all the tabs you wish to save as a
group, click the new "Add to Favorites" button ( ),
from the menu choose "Add Tab Group to Favorites..."
Give the group a folder name:
And click Add.
To open the group of tabs simultaneously, open
the favorites center (Ctrl-I), hover your mouse over
the folder containing the group, and click the arrow
to the right of the folder name. The pages
will open each on their own tab.
IE7 has a very nice feature called "Quick Tabs"
which makes it simple to jump to any open tab using
a system of thumbnails of the various pages
currently open. To activate Quick Tabs click
the Quick Tabs button ( )
or press Ctrl-Q. To open any of the tabs,
simply click its thumbnail from the Quick Tabs View.
To close it, right click its thumbnail and choose
"Close." To return to the open tab you were on
when you entered Quick Tab mode, click the Quick Tab
button again or press Ctrl-Q again.
The drop-down next to the Quick Tab button will
display a list of web pages on the various tabs.
You can also jump to one by clicking its title from
this drop-down.,
To set a group of tabs as your home page, first
open the pages on a set of tabs, then click the
drop-down next to the Home button and choose Add or
Change Home Page...
Then select "Use the current tab set as your home
page" and click Yes.
The active tab when you next open your browser
will be the leftmost, first in the series of tabs.
You may also manually enter URLs to be part of your
home page tab set using the Internet Options choice
on the Tools menu:
To change the default IE7 behavior of tabs, use
the Settings button in the Tabs area on the General
tab of those same Internet Options:
The settings you see illustrated above are the
IE7 default settings. If you decide you do not
like the change you have made, re-enter this area
and click the "Restore defaults" button.
Once you become used to tabbed browsing, you will
wonder how you ever got along without it.
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