We would like to thank everyone for giving our tabbed browsing implementation a try and submitting your feedback. We are actively listening and working on improving the feature!
Our goal in delivering this feature was to give IE users a tabbed browsing solution to enhance overall online search and browse experiences prior to the official release of IE7 without them having to install a completely new browser.
Many of you have reported a flicker when you switch tabs. We understand that this is bothersome and are actively working on improvements to reduce the tab flicker. There have also been reports of issues associated with tabs and using F11 in IE to get to full screen mode. We are also looking into a fix for this.
Our current MSN implementation does have some limitations as a browser add-in that we have had to work within. For example, in order to not override existing IE shortcuts, we picked shortcut keys different from other non-Microsoft tab-enabled browsers. For a complete list of keyboard shortcuts check out our Tabbed Browsing Help page.
Despite these constraints, we’ve built in a couple neat features that we believe you’ll find useful and convenient!
1) If you go into MSN Toolbar Options and select Tabbed Browsing, you can select to always have MSN Search result links open in background tabs. By doing so, the QuickTabs button is automatically enabled every time you’re on a MSN search results page.
2) When adding a new tab, you can have the default page as MSN Search or your IE home page. If you set it to MSN Search, every time you want to launch a search, you can just click on the new tab button.
3) You can restore your last viewed tabs from the last IE session by selecting the “Open Last Viewed Tabs” option off the My Tabs icon. This is great if you happen to close a set of tabs and want to get back to them.
In summary, we’re tracking your feedback closely and hope to have an improved version available very soon!
-Denise Ho, MSN Search Toolbar PM
PS- O'Reilly's Window DevCenter has an article that goes deeper on some of the other features of the toolbar.