Tip #3 - Using Tabbed Browsers

100 Computer Tips in 100 Days

Tip #3 - Using Tabbed Browsers

Some of the tabs open in my browser all the time.

Click the new tab area to add another website to your
browser session,.

Since 2006, all major web browsers have featured a tabbed interface. More than six years later, many users still do not understand the value of these tabs in a browser and are confused when they close the browser window and get a message asking if they want to close the current tab or browser.

My computer is on all the time and my browser is always open, you never know when the mood strikes to do some internet surfing. Using the tabs I am able to quickly switch between Google searches, Gmail, FaceBook and other frequently used sites. You can see some of my tabs pictured above. If I’m shopping I can open multiple tabs and compare the prices I've seen on BestBuy versus Amazon.  If you need another tab opened, click the little new tab on the right side of the tab area. Tabs can be closed selectively by using the close “x” or the entire browser can be closed using the close button.

The settings area in Google Chrome that enables
the browser to open the complete set of tabs
you had open at your last browsing session. This
is particularly helpful if you shut down your
computer regularly.

The best feature of tabs is that you can set up the option to reopen all of your tabs when you reopen the browser. This makes it easy to go back to what you had opened when you have “unexpectedly” quit from the browser or have to restart after downloading software.  In  Safari browser tabs are restored by default and many people have a problem with that because there is no setting to give you a choice about it. If you hold down the Shift key while opening Safari it does not restore the last set of tabs. The settings for this on Chrome is in the “Customize and Control Google Chrome” menu in the upper right corner, while on Firefox it’s in the Tools menu, Options area.

Happy Computing! See you tomorrow. - Diane