Originally posted by Admiral LSD
Tabs, MDI same difference. The MDI is just a much better way of doing it as it's more tightly integrated with the program. Even with tabs, Moz still acts like an SDI browser, ie pressing Ctrl-N opens a whole new browser window (in Opera, it adds another window to the MDI) and clicking a link that opens a new window will do just that (again, Opera will add a new window to the MDI and load the page in it) and is extremely annoying because of it. You can even get the same "tabbed" effect (again, a fair while before Moz had it) by moving the Page bar to the top of the screen, something I've been doing the whole time I've used it as having it on the bottom kept interfering with my auto-hidden Start bar.
No, it isn't the same difference. Lookit the latest version of MS Word. That program has, in the past, used MDI consistantly - one program window, but multiple child windows. Now, with the program grouping of WinXP, MS has made Word into what is essentially a SDI (
not the Strategic Defense Initiative...!

). Thus every document has its own window (incedentally occupying more taskbar space on non-XP OSes, such as the venerable Win2k), and they are all grouped into a single taskbar button in XP.
Why did MS make that change? I haven't the foggiest, but there must have been a good reason for it, right?

Anyways, the point is that MDI is generally much more cluttered than tabs - just look at pre-tabs Opera screenies to see what I mean. I mean, come on - how often do you right click on the windows taskbar and choose "Cascade Windows" or one of the window tiling options? You see, in essence, the taskbar, with its buttons for windows, is just another tabbed interface.
But yes, I agree with you that Mozilla's implementation of tabs is kinda weak. Personally, I get along just fine with it, since Mozilla provides the middle-mouse button option of clicking on any link to open it in a new tab. Yeah, I use that button almost exclusively when I want to follow a new link w/o leaving the current page, but imagine a situation where you're looking up all sorts of game tips for some game, and replying to a ton of threads in HLP at the same time. With Mozilla, you can have all the game tip pages be tabs in one window, and all the HLP stuff be tabs in another window. (Personally, I just use the same window all the time, but whatever).
So the only thing I want to know is exactly when Opera started using tabs for its MDI. Pre- or post- NetCaptor?