MSN Introduces Tabbed Browsing

According to Denise Ho of MSN’s Search’s Weblog, MSN has introduced tabs in their toolbars. There have been mixed reviews on the tabs although Denise regards them highly (could she be impacted by the fact that she works for MSN??).

Adam Stiles , one voice of the opposition, notes that the tabs not only waste memory, but they also waste space.

Denise highlights the functionality of the tabbed toolbar for those who like to shop online. She says that the toolbar allows her to bookmark her favorite shopping sites and allows her to view them simultaneously.

The tabbed toolbar also allows you to open a search results page in the background to avoid constantly having to hit the “back” key to return to your results page.

MSN is supposed to be introducing the tabbed toolbar to IE 7; currently, you can get the tabbed toolbar in IE 5.01 or higher.

Definitely sounds like an innovative idea for MSN. Firefox has been implementing tabs for some time. Theirs might be considered better because the tabs actually appear in the browser.

Some comments to Denise’s posting included questions about functionality including:

• If there is any way to open new tabs on middle-click,
• If there is a way to hide the MSN toolbar so as not to waste screen space.

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