Tip!
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Tabbed Browsing
- Date: July 13, 2006
- Topic: Websurfer
- Level: Intermediate
Articles > Websurfer > Tabbed Browsing
Tabbed browsing is going to change the way you use your computer. This is a grand claim, I know, but I also believe it completely — this simple feature has revolutionized my surfing experience.
The back arrow on your browser lets you go into the past — viewing pages that you have already visited. The forward arrow lets you come 'forward' from the past up to the page that you most recently visited. Tabbed browsing lets you take this one step further — keeping track of pages that you have not visited yet. It's a way of managing your options.
What is Tabbed Browsing?
Basically, tabbed browsing is a feature that first apeared in Safari and rapidly spread to to other browsers. The idea is that if you hold down the Apple key when you click on a hyperlink (or the Control key on a Windows machine) the web page that you are looking at remains as it was and the new web page is loaded in another pane behind the first. Each pane displays a tab with the page's title, and by clicking on the tabs you can easily switch between panes.
If you Apple-Click (or Control-Click) the hyperlink and don't get a tab (i.e., if the page loads normally or loads in another window) then tabbed browsing is not enabled. Look in the Preferences for your web browser and turn it on.
How Will This Change My Life?
Imagine that you are looking for something on Google. You open a new browser window (via Apple-N or Control-N), go to Google.com, and type in a few keywords. When the results page comes back you Apple-Click (or Control-Click) on the promising hyperlinks and they open in tabs behind the current one. When you have selected all the promising links on the page, type in some different keywords and repeat the process. Your first (and visible) tab shows the Google window, and you are accumulating a collection of other tabs 'on the shelf' for future reference.
Now, click on the second tab — this is the first link that you selected back when you began your search. If it doesn't look promising, close it and move on to the third. If you see any links on that page that look promising, Apple-Click them and they will go onto the shelf for future reference.
When you are done with the second tab, either close it (if it was not helpful) or simply click on the third tab. Repeat the process — exploring a page, noting any possible avenues of research, and discarding what doesn't work out — until you reach the last tab. Now you have a single window that contains all of the information about the subject.
Capturing the Search Results
Some browsers (notably Firefox) have a feature whereby you can make a bookmark for each tab (Bookmarks > Bookmark All Tabs), thus saving your research for the future. I like to name my bookmarks with the date (in yy-mm-dd format so the alphabetic listing is also chronological) and the topic. So if I was searching today for patent leather shoes I would bookmark my results in the folder "060713 Patent Leather Shoes".
Even if the browser you are using does not let you bookmarks all tabs, you will certainly be able to open all items in a bookmarks folder into a tabbed window. Under Firefox I do this by choosing Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks, selecting the bookmarks I want, then right-clicking and choosing Open in New Tab from the popup menu. I do this to manage my daily surf — I have a bookmarks folder called "Morning Read" that contains all of the webcomics and news pages that I like to visit. I can quickly open a single window that contains all of my daily content, read it, and then close the window and get on with my day.
Conclusion
Tabbed browsing is one of those features that seems innocuous at first, and then once you have used it for a while you won't know how you lived without it. Get hooked now!