Problems With Multiple Browser Windows

Browsing the Web using tabs instead of new windows saves resources.Helle Glaskugel World Wide Web image by Marem from Fotolia.com

Web browsing changed forever in 1993 when Mosaic, the first mass-distributed graphical browser, premiered and opened up the World Wide Web to everyday audiences. Browser technology itself was born in the 1980s, but Mosaic featured such novel advancements as text in line with images and easy to use buttons for navigation. Tabbed browsing, or the feature that allows users to open parallel pages without using a new browser window, also has its roots in the 1980s, but it wasn't until Multizilla, a project of the Mozilla Foundation, that tabbed surfing became popular. Using multiple browser windows is largely a thing of the past as of 2010, since parallel browsing with tabs instead of new windows eliminates some annoying problems.

Confusing Browser Behavior

Windows Explorer was slow to implement tabbed browsing, fearing user confusion and architecture integration. IE7 Beta in 2006 marked Microsoft's first official foray into the arena, but their launch skipped some important functionality. Early versions allowed websites to override the tab feature automatically, opening certain kinds of links in new foreground windows anyway. Opening more than one browser window on certain actions, while tabbing inside one window the rest of the time, inspired the user confusion Microsoft had hoped to avoid by shying away from tabs in the first place.

Each browser window is a discrete process running all of the support the full program needs. This behavior hogs resources. Opening pages in new tabs allows the browser to share its resources with all of the open pages. One open window provides the base of support for all the internal browsing behavior which means that each tab only adds a little more to the resource requirement for the operation. Opening two separate browser windows, however, doubles the resource drain.

Opening Web pages in multiple browser windows clutters up the taskbar at the bottom of the screen and makes organizing web pages difficult. As of 2010, tabbed browsing includes behavior customization that allows you to set tabs to open at the end of the line, open next to the "parent" tab, switch automatically to a new tab or open a new tab but leave it in the background. This helps you keep related pages together and use the hot keys, "cntrl, TAB" to go from one to the other.