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The Beginning of the End for Tabbed Browsing?
Mozilla Labs' Firefox wasn't the first browser ever to use tabbed browsing (that award went to the Opera browser back in 2000), but it did beat Internet Explorer to the punch. In fact, tabbed browsing was one of the features that set Firefox apart from its Microsoft-developed competitor.
Now, ironically enough, Mozilla is holding a design competition with the goal of making tabbed browsing a thing of the past.
"Tabs worked well on slow machines on a thin Internet, where ten browser sessions were 'many browser sessions'," reads the Design Challenge Web site. "However, if you have more than seven or eight tabs open they become pretty much useless."
The challenge is particularly relevant to browsing the Web on mobile devices, where limited screen real estate and processing power make tabs more of an obstacle than an assistance.
No prizes are listed, but going down in history for pioneering new ways for humans to gather and organize data in this Information Age seems like a pretty cool distinction to us. [From: PC Pro]
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Comments
10
Subscribe to commentsJose FarrugiaMay 21st 2009 8:42AM
Oh, I'll be joining this! Check out a few ideas already here:
http://www.mangochico.com/firefox-tab-browsing-is-yesterday/
midgaryMay 21st 2009 9:29AM
FWIW, Opera was not the first with tabbed Browsing. If you go back to your parent company archives, you will find that the internet only dial up service they bought in 1996, GNN, actually had tabbed browser. The service was essentially scrapped by AOL when they began offering an "all you can eat" plan for dial-up.
back to lucking.....
GalleyMay 21st 2009 9:48AM
I believe NetCaptor, a browser shell for IE had tabbed browsing before Opera.
Kyle BMay 21st 2009 10:36AM
Sorry but when I browse the web I usually have anywhere from 10-30 tabs open at a time. I like to multitask on the web, and come back to sites later.
FrostieMay 21st 2009 11:25AM
I dont like it.
Steven ParkerMay 21st 2009 12:02PM
What is wrong with finishing your work or whatever you are doing and then closing a few tabs and then opening some new ones? Do you all have attention Deficit Disorder? Who needs 30 topics open at once?
CarrieMay 27th 2009 4:08PM
Well, I like browsing some sites that may have many links to possibly open (deviantArt, some shopping sites, even Switched if there are multiple interesting stories) and then go to later. I don't call it ADD so much as I do "finish this first, then do this later".
bobJul 16th 2009 11:09PM
I typically use tabbed browsing because every IE session I launch takes forever to come up on the screen. Also viewing web links in tabs helps compare the same information on the same browser. Unless some other method is invented to replace the browser, I doubt tabbed browsing will go away. Now cell phones and limited devices will have a growing up stage and will need to be fed Gerber-net, till they become as powerful as laptops. The technology is here with no economy to drive it yet into a product. Putting an Intel Atom into a cell phone / Pda would kill the need for such contrived browsing without tabs.
AdamJul 18th 2009 3:49AM
The bottleneck for mobile devices vs. tabbed browsing does not reside in the particular aspect of hardware that you're suggesting, bob. On the contrary, many devices have no problem with the speed/memory aspect of tabbed browsing (and use it, in fact, if not on such a grand scale as 30 tabs open at once, heh -- Opera and Webby being two examples).
The bottleneck, and the point of this initiative, lies in the size of the screens. It's a truly confounding problem, from a hardware design point of view, considering that you can only increase screen size by so much before you negate the integral "mobile" designation :)
So, it needs to be a software design solution.
I use a Firefox extension called "FaviconizeTab", another one called "Smart Bookmarks Bar", and a third called "IdentFavicon". The first minimizes a tab to show only it's favicon when double-clicked, and the second shows only favicons on the bookmark toolbar. The third automatically applies a random abstract favicon graphic to sites without one. I don't think this would solve the problem entirely, but I have to admit, I wish I could do a combination of these things on my PPC.
Crice7Jul 21st 2009 3:52PM
This crushes me! I normally have between 30-160 tabs open at a time. I have many research projects that require me to compare multiple pieces of data, and the easiest way to do so is with tabs. Not having tabs will be a huge hindrance...