Microsoft Ships IE Tabbed Browsing Upgrade for MSN Toolbar

Microsoft rereleased its MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search today after adding a key feature back into the product: tabbed browsing for Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). The tabbed-browsing feature is available to IE users several months before Microsoft is expected to ship IE 7.0, the next major version of IE. The main new feature in IE 7.0, of course, will be tabbed browsing.

The new IE tabbed-browsing functionality you get when you install MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search is similar to tabbed browsing on other browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox. The tool includes a My Tabs feature that lets you easily bookmark a set of Web site addresses, each of which will open in individual tabs, or tabbed subpages, when you select them. The feature also lets you open MSN Search results in background tabs, which don't disrupt the current window display.

When I spoke with Microsoft about MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search in April, the tabbed-browsing feature was scheduled for inclusion in the initial public release of the product. When MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search shipped in May, however, the feature had been dropped so that Microsoft could test the functionality further. Originally, Microsoft planned to ship tabbed browsing as an iFilter add-on for the initial MSN Search Toolbar. However, current users of the toolbar will need to uninstall the initial version of the product and install the new version (see the URL below).

This new tabbed-browsing feature represents the second time that MSN has jumped out ahead of the Windows Division with its MSN Search Toolbar. In addition to shipping tabbed browsing for IE first, the MSN Search Toolbar also adds instant desktop-searching capabilities, a feature that Microsoft originally planned for Longhorn. However, the company has delayed Longhorn until late 2006.

MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search is free and requires Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, or Windows 2000 and IE 5.01 or later. To obtain more information or the free download, visit the MSN Web site.

http://toolbar.msn.com/

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I love this new tab feature and the search tool is great, I'm just hoping that MSN can resolve the issue that some people including myself are having where the toolbar is crashing Outlook 2003...

Anonymous User June 09, 2005 (Article Rating:

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Yawn!

Anonymous User June 09, 2005 (Article Rating:

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The tabs have made IE very unstable. It just doesn't work as expected. The quality of software is not what I would expect from Microsoft. Just compare tabs with desktop search (software quality) and you'll understand. And the implementation is no where near as good as Opera or Firefox.

pdileepa June 09, 2005 (Article Rating:

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"The tabs have made IE very unstable. It just doesn't work as expected. The quality of software is not what I would expect from Microsoft."

Huh? Unstable? Doesn't work as expected? That's EXACTLY what I would expect from Microsoft!

Anonymous User June 09, 2005 (Article Rating:

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Huh? Unstable? Doesn't work as expected? That's EXACTLY what I would expect from Microsoft!

LOL!!!

Anonymous User June 09, 2005 (Article Rating:

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It's working fine for me - no problems whatsoever...

Paul, can you start deleting the "Yawn" comments, I don't know why anyone bothers to write them. Guess its some kid who thinks he's funny.

Anonymous User June 09, 2005 (Article Rating:

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Ah, tabbed browsing. Another "innovation" from Microsoft. ;)

How many years have the rest of us been using tabs?

Anonymous User June 09, 2005 (Article Rating:

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Thank god for Microsoft bringing these amazing innovations! Tabbed browsing, I've never seen that before! Just like I've never seen desktop search, hardware-accelerated vector-based graphics, least-privileged user accounts, improved command lines, and so on.

I'm so glad I have Microsoft to let me play the lateset Sims expansion! After all, that's what I and most other people use Windows for.

Anonymous User June 09, 2005 (Article Rating:

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"Who needs tabs, keep your firefox, my tabs are in my taskbar."-Crazed MICRO$UCK fanatic commenting on Tabs in firefox last year!!!!

Anonymous User June 09, 2005 (Article Rating:

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Paul -- IFilters are low-level objects used specifically by the indexing service to index file contents. It has nothing to do with the physical toolbar itself. Please revise your article to just say "add-on" instead of "iFilter add-on".

Anonymous User June 09, 2005 (Article Rating:

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