Over the few months that FreeMacWare.com has been online, we have had a few people write in and ask for us to have the links open in a separate window so that they can check out the developer’s site, then easily return to the blog to find more freeware. But I think that more people dislike “open in a new window” then like it, so we haven’t made the change. Each time, we have returned their emails suggesting that they use tabbed browsing in Safari. I have been surprised how few of them had heard of “tabbed browsing”. Tabbed browsing is always one of the first things that I enable when setting up Macs. It makes surfing the internet so much more organized and effective.

For those of you unfamiliar with tabbed browsing, it enables you to keep all of your web windows in just one window. When you hold the command key and click on a link, the new site will open up in a tab in the same window. Clicking on the different tabs will let you jump from window to window. Perhaps a real world scenario will help.

When I search on ebay, I usually find any number of interesting products. Rather then click to a product then go back to click on another one, I will hold down the command key and click on all the products I want to see. That way, I just go thru the tabs and keep the ones that are good. You can do the same thing while searching on Google. Or, go through the Archives of FreeMacWare.com and open all potentially interesting freeware in tabs and then go thru them one by one.

To enable tabbed browsing in Safari, go to Safari>Preferences and select the “Tabs” icon. Just select the first box as follows. (You will also see some intructions on how to use it.)

This tip will be “day one” stuff to some readers, but surprisingly there are alot of Mac users that don’t know about it. Am I the only one that worships the day that tabbed browsing was released? At any one time I can have 100 or so tabs open.

Posted in All, Tips |