Aug 14 2007
Who needs tabbed browsing?
Loading ...Well, Microsoft obviously didn’t care much for it…It’s been nearly 10 years since the first web browser offered organized, clean-desktop oriented, tabbed browsing. Yes! 10 years! (I couldn’t believe it myself) And many of us since have switched away to Netscape, Mozilla, and lately Firefox for this reason, amongst others.
Notice I referred to IE as the ‘most common’ browser, not necessarily the ‘most popular.’ The most popular browser would be the one that’s not laser-etched into every orifice of your operating system, one you may have had to download and install, and preferred over the ‘embedded browser.’
Redmond’s tech and innovation leader had to lose another 10% of their browser share before seeing a business need to add a single feature that was clearly a powerful ‘move away’ factor.
However, I think they’re too late. Waiting almost 10 years before witnessing a noticeable trend in technology and user interface is too long, an eternity in this industry. This is enough of a message to your user base that you don’t really care what your users ACTUALLY want. You only care about what you think they _should_ want. Do I hear Marx turning in his grave?
Now we have Safari for Windows and Mac, yet another web browser that’s had tabs for years and even on the Mac, Safari is not etched into every crevasse of the OS.
I ditched “the people’s web browser” quite a few years ago…
Go Firefox and Safari!
