Test Driving Linux

Exploring Tabbed Web Browsing

Tabbed browsing is a great feature for power web surfers. In normal web browsing, clicking on a link changes the current page to display the contents of the link you clicked on, or sometimes a clicked link opens up a new browser window. The eventual result is that after 20 minutes of surfing you end up with several open browser windows cluttering up your desktop.

The solution to this browsing mess is tabs. Tabbed browsing allows you to have several pages open at the same time within one window. Tabbed browsing, which originated in the web browser Opera, has become so popular that all modern web browsers except Internet Explorer (who would have guessed?) include the feature. Don't ask me why Microsoft hasn't added it yet; until recently, they were way behind with pop-up ad blocking, too.

One of the best ways to show off the power of tabs is to visit a site that has a lot of links to articles you want to read. A news site is a good choice. A favorite site among Linux users is http://www.slashdot.org, which proclaims itself to be "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters." To see how tabbed browsing works, open the Slashdot site, hold down the Ctrl key, and left-click on several article links. Each link opens in a new tab located just below the Location field. Figure 2-12 shows three tabs; Google and Slashdot are in the background, and the tab in the foreground is displaying oreilly.com. You can also click your middle mouse button on a link for the same effect. ...