Firefox Browser & Tabs

[Capt Claret]

Greetings oh revered IT savy folk.

I've just started using Firefox after hearing an IT expert rave about it on a radio program.

One of his loves, was the ability to open new pages in tabs, as opposed to another browser window.

Given the vast amount of experience I've gained, about 5 hours I'd say, can some one explain why opening a page in a tab view is so desirable? The tabs appear on the top of the page, if using IE6 the new browser icon is on the task bar.

At this stage it almost appears to be six of one and half a dozen of the other????

[Jhieminga]

Just my personal opinion, but my 'computing environment' seems less cluttered with just one FF icon on the taskbar instead of numerous IE icons. In its standard installation FF still opens other windows when prompted to do so by websites, you can circumvent this by installing the 'tabbrowser preferences' plugin from the Mozilla site.

The technical reason for liking tabs is that every new IE window is another instance of the complete program running, which drains resources. With multiple tabs open in FF you are still running only one instance of the program, keeping resources free for other applications.

[Bre901]

Jhieminga
I was disapointed by the way the basic Firefox works : no provision to open a bookmark by default in a new tab 'à la Opera'.
The extension you mentioned (pedantic : it's called an extension, not a plugin) still doesn't help.
A bit of searching in the "hints and tips" yields this one : Tab Mix (http://hemiolapei.free.fr/divers/tabmix/tabmix.html.en) which apparently does the job nicely :ok:
This extension does not change the "Tools/Options" menu, options for the extension have to be accessed through "Tools/Extensions" then Options in the dialog box.

[Jhieminga]

Bre901, you are very correct, indeed it is an extension!

Not being familiar with Opera, I was quite happy with FF's tab options when I first used it (actually I used the Mozilla browser before FF 1.0 was released) and I still am, for me the Tabbrowser preferences extension does the trick. I can see that the Tab mix extension offers some more options for those who want to customize their browser a bit more.

My guess is that FF is aimed predominantly at those computer users wishing to move away from IE which is why in its 'basic' mode it mimics a lot of things from IE (a lot of people are confused when confronted with Tabs for the first time). The added value in using it is that it is easily customized to suit people's needs. Therefore I can run it with the settings I like, but someone else can use it as an IE clone.

My main reasons for switching to FF are still: less buggy than IE, and less susceptible to spyware. I would have been happy with just that, so all the extra's are a bonus!

[Bre901]

Jhieminga

Your reasons not to use M$IE :yuk: :yuk: :yuk: are quite valid indeed

I'm a bit more demanding than you as I actually never used IE, except for M$-crippled pages. Been using Opera for a couple of years, but the ad-free version is not that cheap (have paid for the one I'm using at home) and I don't want to register the browser I'm using at work (the corporate standard being IE) so I was trying FF. The only (moderate) unpleasantness I was experiencing is gone now :ok:

[shaky]

Bre901

Centre/wheel click will open a bookmark in a new tab. Be careful of the various tab extensions as some of them are known to break Firefox or its pop-up blocker.

[Cameronian]

Well, I read the reports and have installed Firefox but (early days, I know) I don't see why I shouldn't just keep on with Netscape (now 7.01) which I've been using in all its forms for years and years. I must be missing something, perhaps even something obvious, but I don't see what....

[goates]

Cameronian,

With Firefox you get only the basic browser that doesn't try to install anything else or encourage you to buy things through AOL or Netscape. FireFox releases are also newer and contain bug and security fixes that may not have made it into Netscape yet. Otherwise there isn't much difference technologically between them.

[Cameronian]

Thanks for coming back so quickly goates. I have been very happy with Netscape, especially now i've ditched Norton and changed to AVG and Ad-aware. I was about to look at Netscape 8 when I thought once again about Firefox, having looked at Mozilla last year. I just rushed into installing Firefox 10 mins ago - don't know why, it's not like me!! Think I'll uninstall it now, if I can find out how.

[Blacksheep]

With Firefox you can bookmark to either the dropdown menu or the toolbar, or both. You can also create a new bookmark folder on the toolbar and add multiple bookmarks to it.

I saved my commonest bookmarks - my three different hotmail addresses and PPRuNe - to a folder on the toolbar. When you place your mouse pointer on this folder, a drop down menu shows all four bookmarks and an 'open in tabs' choice. If you click on this choice, it automatically launches all four bookmarked sites in one go, each in their own tab. Its a bit like having multiple windows open but much simpler to operate. Beware of having too many bookmarks in one folder though - four at one time is about the maximum for smooth operation.

[terryJones]

I have not used M$IE since the day I found Netscape many years ago and found how fast a browser could be. Last week I downloaded the latest, Netscape 8 Beta, based on Mozilla. I have also downloaded the Thunderbird Email package, and so far (touch wood as they say) no problems at all. I have not yet found a site that NS8 will not open, but then if the site designers cannot be arsed to make it compatable, do I really want to read it anyway...