I wasn’t saying that Firefox had tabs first. I was meaning that tabs predate IE7 in many other applications (which does include Firefox).

So how does the Windows XP (at work so no access to 7 right now) tab model behave? Ctrl-tab (with release, no holding of ctrl) cycles through tabs. To observe this you can go to the explorer folder options, taskbar properties or most panels in the control panel (which means that the tab behaviour can probably be found all the way back to Windows 95) where most of the panels use tabs.

This is why “the same way Windows does” doesn’t sit right with me in regard to tabs. It is Firefox that is doing it the Windows way.

If you want to be able to toggle, then use separate windows and alt-tab, as that is the Windows way.

Somehow I’m not being clear about Ctrl+Tab. It cycles through tabs if you hold the Ctrl key down. If you release Ctrl and Ctrl+Tab again, it goes to the previously viewed tab — at least in IE 8, which is the only version I have. (And sometimes you have to wait out IE8′s slowness to get the full page loaded for this to work, it seems.)

Technically, tabs do have a fixed order, but from a human interface standpoint, they (also) have a presentation order akin to the Windows z-order (depth), in effect an MRU algorithm (most recently used). IE’s implementation allows both — continuous cycling and alternation — the same way Windows does. You’re right in saying that Firefox had tabs first, but I personally would have revised the implementation of Ctrl+Tab the moment I saw what IE had done and recognized its user-friendly parallel to Windows. (Actually, I am confident I’d have done it the Windows way in the first place, since flipping back and forth between two tabs is something I do a lot.)

Now if only the Excel team would get on board with Ctrl+Tab. (You need Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn to switch among worksheet tabs. It works, but why not get in synch with IE rather than forcing users to learn one more way of doing the same thing?)

Now if IE does have the ctrl-tab for recent behaviour you describe then it is Microsoft that is guilty of NIH.

1. The tab paradigm has been around for a lot longer than IE has had tabs.

2. tabs are not windows. Tabs have a fixed (and obvious) order, so any cycling should be in that order. Windows on the other hand have no order, yet they do have depth. The alt-tab model cycles through in depth order, you can toggle between two windows becuase viewing a window will move it to the top of the stack. However when you view a tab, the ordering does not change.

For example 2, if you are going to highlight Firefox in regard to moving by word, you should include Notepad and Excel because they also doesn’t stop on punctuation.

But… it’s horses for courses I guess.

Perhaps the Chrome/FF developers preferred the cycling method (switching could be quite confusing at times if you didn’t know what you were looking at).

There is definitely a case to be made for keeping it consistent though.

IE implemented Ctrl+Tab along the same model. Press it once, and you go to another tab. Press it again, and you’re back at the first tab.

You can hold down Ctrl or Alt and pres Tab multiple times to cycle through tabs or windows, respectively. This hold-it-down-to-cycle behavior is what Firefox and Chrome break.

It’s not a big deal if I’m reading, say, the NY Times on line, but when I’m working on a column here and trying to go back and forth with another site for research, the paradigm break is annoying.

I did it automatically, and it worked, so I thought hey got it right