Tabbed Browsing in Internet Explorer with Windows Live Toolbar

Tabbed browsing is a great concept which firefox and opera web browser users can talk for hours about. It lets you open up multiple pages / tabs in one window, and switch easily between web pages / tabs.

Internet Explorer 7 final release will have tabbed browsing. If you are an early adopter / developer and like testing beta software, you can download Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 and test it out.

Since I am still with IE6 and have not yet downloaded IE7+, I was using the functionality of the new Yahoo toolbar to use tabbed browsing in Internet explorer. Of course there was the wonderful option of using the Avant Browser, a full feature tabbed browser having tabbed browsing and much more.

Though the tabs via Yahoo toolbar worked perfectly, yet somehow they did not blend and run as smoothly as I wanted them to. Only a Microsoft product could blend the best on IE to create tabs. And then I installed the Windows Live Toolbar. It is a multifunctional toolbar with popup blocker, feed detector, form filler, search, and of course tabbed browsing. You can easily configure and enhance it my more downloads.

What it lets you do
• Search from any Web page
• See a warning when a site may be trying to scam your personal info
• Cut down on unwanted pop-ups
• Collect, organize and share the info you find online
• Auto-detect a site’s RSS feeds, and have them automatically sent to your personalized Live.com home page
• Effortlessly customize your toolbar with only the buttons you want
• Access your favorites from any PC
• Quickly switch between Web pages in the same window
• Fill in Web forms instantly

Once you download it, it will ask for what all extra you need. Get the feed detector, pop up blocker (if you are not happy with the Windows pop up blocker), tabbed browsing, form filler and whatever else you need like the phishing filter. Then it will download them all. I selected the basic few features to get all in around 1MB and a few seconds.

Windows live search is selected by default. If you need Google Search as default in Windows Live Toolbar each time you search, then go to Toolbar Options>Web Search>Other Select Engines and enter.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&q=$w

Now it will search Google by default when you use the Windows Live Toolbar to search. Now you can uninstall you Google Toolbar if Google Search was your primary need for keeping it.

The tabs work beautifully. I hope that they create something similar to the cool firefox extensions that allow you to manipulate and customize tabs to your needs. And of course there are many more popular toolbars for your web browser.