Tabbed Browsing in IE vs Other features

Article
01/12/2005

Somewhere in one of my posts, someone mentioned Tabbed Browsing and what is stopping the IE team from putting tabs in their browser. Then again someone mentioned that they can live without tabs but they don't like BHOs taking over their machines. So I thought why not open the room for discussion on this and ask everyone who feels one way or another about tabs about their opinion. The primary question is (subjectively) this:

What features should be ABSOLUTELY present in a browser to make that browser your default browser ?? Is it tabbed browsing? it is full control over BHOs? it is the best security and control available in a browser? is it fancy UI? is it the ability for the browser to conform to the specification to the very last, minute little detail? Is it a combination of these mentioned features? Is it something else?

In other words, what are the things that you want most in IE or want IE to improve?

Comments are welcome and appreciated.

Comments

Anonymous
January 12, 2005
Better handling of newer CSS stuff would be one thing. It isn't fancy and some of the stuff isn't used much (as a 90 % browser won't handle it), but it would surely be nice.
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
Tabs are a must.

Printing - Mozilla resizes a page to print it - IE is bad in that you get cut off pages when printing.

The 'instant search' feature in mozilla makes it my choice. i.e. search instantly using: /<term>

No popups (Mozilla is still better as it offers options on what Javascript can do to your browser)

Themed GUI, so I can make it look what I like.

Form completion by double-clicking in fields to fill in previously known data.

Auto Login form completion - saves time.

Those are all things in Mozilla that are not in IE that make me use Mozilla. I wouldn't change back until they were all available, since it would be going back to an inferior product.

I don't think security is as big an issue now days - both have bugs, people just target IE more... but Mozilla gets its fair share, they are just fixed quicker. The faster new feature lifecycle is also an attraction to Mozilla.

On the specification side, it's always bugged me that you don't follow standards. Please do, since that's what they are there for. Compatibility used to be a pain, but these days it is easier to code for both browsers - but it should never have been hard. I'm sure someone on your team must have heard of www.w3c.org. :)
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
In this order:

Tabbed Browsing with tab groups (like Avant)

CSS compliance

Printing (no cutoffs)
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 12, 2005
CSS2 support is first.

2. Tabbed browsing is second.
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 12, 2005
Tabs are a lifesaver: the ability to use the middle button to open a link in a new tab, and the same button to close an existing tab make browsing a totally new experience that I miss a lot when in IE.

Search-as-you-type is an amazing timesaver that is a must for me.

Up-to-date CSS support is a must for me as a developer. As is an easy way to view and toggle on/off the BHOs.

Some way to preview a website before loading it is very helpful (i.e. website thumbnails).

Tag-based favorites (a la http://del.icio.us) would be truly helpful in a browser.
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 12, 2005
Tabs...it is pretty much the only reason I don't use ie anymore.
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
As CSS compliant as possible
- I can't live without mouse gestures/rockers (seriously... I'd just keel over and die).
- Tabs.
- Firefox's Web Developer extension.

I can live without some of the other stuff, but those are pretty much must-haves as far as I'm concerned.
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
Take a look at the latest version of Opera.

That's what I would like to see IE become.
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
I would love to see better plugin support so that I e.g. could write my own additional Popup-blocker in e.g. JavaScript to add filtering of the input-HTML-stream or things like that, without the need to create COM-addins.
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
Not to sounds like a broken record, but here goes, roughly in order of importance:
1. Tabs (including middle-button open/close support). Let me rearrange the tabs, and you'll one-up the default Firefox install.
2. Search page with '/' keypress
3. Full CSS2.1 compliance
4. Full PNG support, esp. transparency
5. Better printing (don't cut stuff off!)
6. Control over javascipt functionality -- no-popups are nice, but what about window resizing, etc? I may want to turn those off, too.
7. Rewrite as a managed code control, so I can reuse in my .NET apps but not have to deal with COM interop or P/Invoke. And don't just hide it under a .NET wrapper (a la Whidbey) -- I want fully managed code running under the CLR and all of the goodness that will bring me.
8. HTTP header info (perhaps on a tab in the File->Properties dialog)
9. XForms support
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
I don't use IE because you guys stopped developing it for Mac OS X :)
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
Tabs. The only reason I use mozilla is tabs.

PNG support. The black background on alpha channels is annoying.
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 12, 2005
This might be the wrong place for this but ...

more on the developer side of things. I would like html elements .innerHTML to return well formed XML. (even if the source is well formed, the innerHTML results are not)

and a view source option that shows the working html. The source that is displayed after DHTML changes or XSL transforms on XML.

maby as an addon package. Developer extentions for IE. Add a cookie editor, form post intercept, ...
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 12, 2005
The ability to zoom in on a page.

For flatpannel displays to look the best, they need to be ran at their native resolution. it is hard to read sites that hardcode font sizes as 8pt to 12pt on a resolution of 1600 by 1200.
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 12, 2005
YOU MUST, REPEAT MUST HAVE TABS.
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
tabs
2. type-ahead dropdowns!
3. fix a bunch of layout bugs. I guess that's another way of saying CSS compliance.
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
For me, a few major ones: 1. Tabs 2. PNG with Alpha support 3. Better CSS(2) compliance 4. Keep favourites/bookmarks in a HTML file, like Moz, so it's easy to back up, move about, share among browsers etc. And a minor one to fix something that annoys the cr@p out of me every time I'm forced to use IE: I always use a maximised browser window. When opening a new IE window (by pressing Ctrl-N), that window is not maximised. The new window should have the same state as the old one (FF and Moz both do this).
Anonymous
January 12, 2005

Tabs
2) Downloadmanager ala FireFox (with the ability to restart etc)
3) Proper printing
4) Instant (incremental as you type) search
5) Extensibility (like FireFox plug-ins)

Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 12, 2005
Better text search on the web pages, it's very annoying when IE doesn't do simple things like wrap to begenning etc.... a next step would be regex search.
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
Security
Self updating (That's a full time job for your emps)
Themes
Some Plug-in capability
Tabs
Better printer support
Built in RSS Support (or an add-in for it, like a live bookmark in Firefox)
Security
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 12, 2005
To enable tab browsing as well as a whole host of additional IE add-ons (i.e. RSS Readers. etc), all YOU (meaning the IE Team) need provide is a meachanism to add a generic BHO Pane that can host another IE window (i.e. like the search pane). I should be able to dock this pane wherever I want (like the Office Task Pane).

I'll make you an offer, If you provide this capability (or even a BHO code sample that hosts an empty pane), I will implement tabbed browsing for you, for free.

This would open up a whole new add-on market that would not require C++ skills since the panes would be implemented as "standard" DHTML/JScript pages.
Anonymous
January 12, 2005

Tabs
2) Rss support
3) Download manager

Anonymous
January 12, 2005
No tabs! That's what ad-ons and Maxthon are for. As if pop-ups aren't confusing enough, tabs would be a nightmare ...
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
I use Firefox for a bunch of reasons including Tabs.

I would suggest adding Tabs first but also RoboForm type functionality, fixing pop-up blocking so it actually works, incorporating Ad Block functionality (suppress images from this site), zoom / shrink an image.

IE is a really good product but what has been done with it over the last 2 years?
Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 12, 2005

Standards compliance

Anonymous
January 12, 2005
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Anonymous
January 13, 2005
As part of the 'Tabs' bandwagon, be sure to include the abiility to bookmark a set of tabs; this is very valuable when researching a topic across multiple web sites.
Anonymous
January 13, 2005
Maxthon is the way that IE should be. You should be able to switch between a classic mode (current IE, no tabs, etc.) and Maxthon. Anyone I have give Maxthon to has absolutely loved it.
Anonymous
January 14, 2005
Security security security - including:

Better popup support. Block all popups by default. Enble showing specific popups that were blocked (instead of the current mode of re-loading the page and loosing all the data you've filled in a form).

No frame-less or toolbar-less popups.
Anonymous
January 15, 2005
Another one would be RSS integration. It's close enough to a browser to make sense. Maybe even resurrecting Active Desktop with somewhat decent performance and putting RSS feeds there?
Anonymous
January 17, 2005
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Anonymous
January 19, 2005
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Anonymous
January 19, 2005
Tabbed browsing and Standards compliance
Anonymous
January 23, 2005
For me to ever come back to Internet Explorer from Firefox, it would have to have :

1) Complete CSS standards compliance (right now the compliance is just straight up laughable)

2) Security

3) Tabbed Browsing and the ability to save a set of tabbed bookmarks.

4) Plugins/extensions and themes

Basically I'm describing Firefox because it really just seems to have everything a person needs in a browser. The development community for it is wonderful and its so far ahead of MSIE in functionality, in my opinion.
Anonymous
January 23, 2005
-Easy to Navigate Menus, Under Tools, Internet Options.
-Rss Reader
-Better Support for Printing
-Download Manager
-Option to Disable Active X
-Option to Disable Javascript, or at least an option so that browser is not tampered, raised or hidden so that we can't close it.
-Option to disable Ads, and Banners, further more blocking images originating from ad dilivery websites.
-Better Control Over Cookies ex. enable only for session, reject cookies that are not from originating site, allow cookies only from sites that are in my trusted zone, reject cookies from untrusted zone.
Anonymous
January 28, 2005

Full CSS 1 and 2 compliance. position:fixed, :hover on tags other than <a>, etc... This is a must. This won't break any old pages as they probably don't use this stuff anyways, but will make my web design much easier and more headache free.

2) XHTML mime type handling. Don't sniff in the document or anything like that. Just render as the type returned from the server. Don't go into quirks mode when a file has the <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> header.

3) Separate IE from the operating system. I've got an old Win 95 laptop that came with IE 3 on it. I uninstalled IE 3, and installed Firefox on it easily. That is easily the most stable computer I own (all running various versions of Windows). If Windows explorer worked without IE being tied in to the OS then, why can't it work now? Let me uninstall IE if I desire. Have MSN Messenger open the default web browser instead of always opening IE when checking e-mail.

4) Tabs. They're a godsend. I often have 10 or more tabs open, but would hate having 10 windows on my start bar. Allow me to bookmark a group of tabs and to set a group of tabs as my home page.

5) Something similar to the developer toolbar extension for FF. As a developer, it is a must. However, I do realize this would likely be an add-on or plug-in rather than part of the core browser.

6) Better bookmark handling. With FF, I just backup one html file, and I can copy it to all of my computers easily. XBEL support would be even better, but I'm not holding my breath.

7) Something like the google search bar in FF. Allow me to specify any search engine I want to use with it.

8) Get rid of Active X all together. I have yet to see one useful thing (save for Windows Update) that uses Active X.

9) Something similar to the Adblock extension for FF (block all images from this server / folder).

10) Something similar to FF's implementation of Live Bookmarks.

11) A new version before Longhorn / 2006. By then it will have been 5 years since IE 6 debuted. Stagnation anyone?

Anonymous
January 28, 2005
Maxthon is what a modern browser should be like.

Its extra features(tabs, ad-block...etc) made it the default browser for me.
Anonymous
January 29, 2005
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Anonymous
February 05, 2005
I've used IE and FireFox a bunch, and I tired switching away because of lack of CSS2 support. I discovered two things about firefox, it's UI has lots of cool things and some of which I would love to see in IE, but at the same time it UI is not a elegant as IE's. The other thing I discovered is that dispite the retoric, there is still no version of netscape you can sit down with the CSS2 spec design a site always expect it to look the way the spec says it should. That said I ended up switching back to IE as my main browser, but I did try to switch away. Among the things I really liked in firefox was its page searching feature. Tabs were alright, but I like windows so I tended to use both, and it can get confusing and the tab management could be a little nicer. Also Firefox would not pass the Mother Usage Test. My mom would get super frustrated with firefox, there is no way I could even force her to stay with it. So whatever changes you make, ensure that my mom can still use IE. ;)
Anonymous
February 07, 2005
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Anonymous
February 08, 2005
Tabs and Find As You Type are a godsend, I'd consider switching back to IE if you had them.

Only if you people (well, your pointy haired bosses anyway) reconsider the decision not to release a new IE version of course, looking at its hardware requirements I highly doubt I'll be switching to Longhorn =)
Anonymous
February 08, 2005

AD block
2) Tabs

Anonymous
February 09, 2005
Better user experience when all but the most important sites (bank, windows update etc) have active scripting disabled.

2. Continuing from that. If I have scripting disabled for site, but there is button that uses scripting to open a window, it does not work. Let me define that scripting only works for actions that I start.

3. All java etc in the Internet disabled by default. If the site look legimate, there are several levels of scripting that I can allow.

4. Majority of the web works fine and looks good without scripting. When scripting is enabled, bad looking advertisements appear and UX is horrible (adds make pages appear 5 times more slow on average)

5. I am in control of what I do. MSN spaces makes every link use scripting to popup a window. What if I wanted the new window to open in the same window? I have 3 mouse buttons to choose which action I want. Microsoft and MSN Spaces should not choose it for me. And even if they do, my browser should give me the control even then.

6. I had a clean XPSP2 with all the default settings on IE. I clicked on some link that went to somewhere at forbes.com, without any questions/popups, activex was installed in such a manner that it was not visible on IE anywhere. MS antispyware did however detect it. Odd I say.

7. In manage-addons, at unknown time a Browser Extension appeared called Research. Only information about is is the GUID and Used/Blocked numbers. Finding that there were these GUID etc information required one to right click on the top "tabs", not very easily discoverable. There is no company name etc assosiacted with the Research browser extension. Odd. It says used around 300 times and blocked around 1200 times.

Could it be the MS background feedback feature? I allow Office/VS usage experience feedback to be sent, but there is no indication that the extension is related to that. By default everything that unknown and with little meta information is spyware to me.

8. IE, its add-ins and a download directory for IE should be in such a tight sandbox that even if you click yes to every run/fake cert dialog, your real machine will not have a worry. How about having the IE always launch in a virtual machine integrated in Longwait. You have the Virtual PC product, now embrace and extend it in LH.

9. Tabs would have less importance if the taskbar implementation would be better and more oriented towards users that have 50 windows open at any time on 3 displays, like some of your own developers.

http://blogs.msdn.com/cyrusn/archive/2004/07/10/179243.aspx
Anonymous
February 09, 2005
For me, tabs are a big deal, but so is the ability to use one browser, and not have to toggle back and forth. I felt that i had found a great solution to this in avant.
Now, i have begun to investigate rss feeds, and find that many of the better multi featured versions integrate with ie (or firefox, but though ff has tabbed browsing, there is still the issue of compatibility with still too many websites) but they don't integrate with avant. So, if ie had tabs, i would use it.
I don't think that rss feeds, etc are so important. There are a lot of companies out there that make ie compatible add ons, plucks rss feed, web snippets, etc. It would be nice to see ie build a solid base product, secure, fast, and then be able to customize it by adding the desired integrating features. Not everyone has the same desires in a web browser, not everyone wants tabs as someone mentioned above. The more customizable a browser is, and the easier it is for the average user to customize it, the more people there are who are willing to use it.
Anonymous
October 19, 2006
Today, the IE team decided to share some of the details of its upcoming release. Chris Wilson posted

Partager via

Tabbed Browsing in IE vs Other features

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