FireFox 2.0 tabbed browsing
Posted by Kevin Onesko on July 31st, 2007My last entry about tabbed browsing was for the tabbed browsing newbie and we can’t forget what drove the Microsoft folks to finally add tabbed browsing, FireFox! Although I am to understand that the first real tabbed browser was Netcaptor, created by Adam Stiles back in 1997.
Opening Tabs
When a new session of FireFox is started it will open one page displaying your home page choice, if you want to have multiple home pages, use the “|” character to separate the URL’s.
Right click on any open Tab and select New Tab from the context menu that appears. A third option is to use the (ctrl T) key combination. These new Tabs will always open in the foreground.
If you wish to open a new Window instead of a new Tab, the (ctrl N) key combination will open a new FireFox window with a Tab already open to your home page(s).
New Tabs open to the address bar already selected, allowing us to quickly enter the URL that we want to visit.
Closing Tabs
Click on the X button to right of screen to close the active Tab or use the (ctrl W) keyboard combination. Alternatively, right click on any tab then select Close Tab or Close Other Tabs.
Reloading Tab content (refreshing a Web page)
The keyboard command F5 convention still works, as does the forced refresh (Ctrl F5). Alternatively, we can right click on a Tab and select Reload or Reload All.
Navigating between Tabs
Simply click on any Tab to view its contents. If you prefer to use your keyboard, the shortcut keys for navigating Tabs are as follows: use the (ctrl tab) key combination to jump from left to right one Tab at a time, and use the (ctrl tab) key combination to jump right to left one Tab at a time.
Navigating Web Pages - Hyperlinks
One of three things will happen when we click on a hyperlink in FireFox 2; the page will load in the current Tab, the page will load in a new Tab, or the page will open in a new window, depending on how a Web pages designer codes a particular hyperlink.
If you wish to control what happens when you click on a hyperlink right click on the link and then select Open Link in New Tab or Open Link in New Window. If you select the first option, the default behavior is for the Tab to open in the background so that you can continue reading your current page undisturbed while the new Tab downloads. If you select the second option the link will, of course, open in a new window (with its own button on the Taskbar). The window will open on top of the originating window.
Don’t want Tabs? Too bad…
Tabbed browsing can not be turned on and off in FireFox.
Why would you want to?
For detailed information about the improvements that are part of FireFox 2, and to download the most recent version of the software, please visit the FireFox 2 homepage at: http://www.mozilla.org/.
Mozilla’s Keyboard Shortcuts
http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/keyboard
An introduction to Mozilla Firefox, part 2
http://opensourcearticles.com/articles/introduction_to_firefox_2
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:40 am
I have to laugh every time I hear someone give credit to Firefox for tabbed browsing. Back in ‘95 there was a combination browser/html editor (the name escapes me) that first introduced tabbed browsing and page pre-fetching. The html editor was actually better than HoTMetaL, the most popular at the time.
In the end, like most good, early to market software products of the Internet age, the company was purchased by AOL and the software disappeared into oblivion.
Anyway, a lot of non-technical users can’t figure out tabs, let along multiple windows. I’ve sat through a few user testing groups where we looked at end-user browser use… painful, btw. Personally, I’d like to see more education on how users can use the tab key to advance through form fields instead of mouse-clicking from field to field. Oh, the time wasted…