Kevin Dente's Blog

The Blip in the Noise
IE6 Tabs with MSN Toolbar - Nice idea, flawed implementation
When I heard that MS was adding tabbed browsing features to IE6 via the MSN Toolbar, I thought it sounded like a great idea. Unfortunately, the implementation of the idea isn't so hot. Things I've noticed so far, just in playing around with it for a few minutes.
  • Creating a new tab and switching tabs causes the entire UI to flash and repaint in a very annoying way. This is the biggest problem I have with the feature - it's very distracting.
  • Explorer bar visibility is remembered per-tab. This causes the UI to rearrange itself as you flip tabs.
  • There doesn't seem to be a way to open a Favorites item in a tab.
I'm happy that MS is embracing tabbed browsing (it is one of the big reasons that I switched to Firefox). But it looks like we'll have to wait until IE7 for an effective implementation.

Published Sunday, June 12, 2005 8:37 PM by kevindente

Comments

# re: IE6 Tabs with MSN Toolbar - Nice idea, flawed implementation@ Monday, June 13, 2005 11:46 PM

I have to agree to that. Flickering is very annoying.

Nat

# re: IE6 Tabs with MSN Toolbar - Nice idea, flawed implementation@ Saturday, June 18, 2005 8:35 PM

why people like firefox with the reason of tab??? opera did it long time ago. And if u still like IE, u should use IE based browsers like Greenbrowser. Greenbrowser is awsome with tabbed browsing n many more features.

If u like FF, u should like it with other reasons.

Myo

# re: IE6 Tabs with MSN Toolbar - Nice idea, flawed implementation@ Monday, June 20, 2005 12:49 PM

I think the fact that Opera is not free has something to do with it. As for Firefox, I certainly have other reasons to use it, such as security, popup-block (yes I know IE has that now), and standards compliance. It's also fast, not bloated, not tied to the OS. I don't know whether IE7 will make me change back. After all, IE4 made me switch from Netscape.

Boris

# re: IE6 Tabs with MSN Toolbar - Nice idea, flawed implementation@ Sunday, July 20, 2008 10:12 PM

also, there's a lot of plugins that for firefox that is very useful. There's also feature that you can add extensions/plugins like firebug that lets you debug/step-into javascript code in the running web application. You can see the code of the html control by just mouse-over on it which is very useful for the web developers. also, i found a very slick plugin which is mouse gesture which lets you do back/forward into the page without clicking the back/forward buttons just by using mouse.

jenue

# re: IE6 Tabs with MSN Toolbar - Nice idea, flawed implementation@ Friday, August 29, 2008 9:17 PM

I can't do this!!!

Rachael

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