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The Colors of Internet Explorer 8

For Grouped Tabs

By Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor

1st of October 2008, 16:37 GMT

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Microsoft played around with colors when it comes down to Internet Explorer 8. Although the graphical user interface of the current iteration of the browser evolved only subtly compared to IE7, IE8 features new tabbed
 navigation eye candy. In accordance with the Grouped Tabs capabilities of IE8, related items are now bound visually by the same color. “The idea behind tab grouping is that tabs originating from the same source are grouped together,” explained Helen Drislane, a program manager on the IE team.

Drislane revealed that the user navigation models evaluated by Microsoft indicated that end users would in fact benefit from visual indicators pointing to the tabs which originated from the same source. The Redmond giant went for colors as the indicators of grouped tabs but also for Tab Groups numerical indicators for users with screen readers.

“Now with visual indicators on my tabs, I can quickly identify the groups of tabs that are related to different tasks,” Drislane added. “If you accidentally close a tab within a group, using the new 'Reopen Closed Tab' option in the menu will not only restore that recently closed tab, but will also restore that tab into the right group. Also, when you have completed a task, tab grouping now makes it easier to close everything related to that task by allowing a one click 'Close this Tab Group' option in the tab context menu.”

Grouped Tabs also allow for advanced navigation capabilities, as end users cannot only Ungroup a Tab, but also close entire Tab Groups, an option which streamlines the workflow. But also “in addition to the right-click context menu options, users can drag and drop tabs. Although the main appeal of this feature is that it works seamlessly in the background (there is no work on the user’s side to get this enhanced tab functionality), there are a couple of us who like to over-organize,” Drislane explained.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 2 is available for download here.

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IE8 | Internet Explorer 8 | Beta 2
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User opinions:


Comment #1 by: marytee on 02 Oct 2008, 09:42 GMT reply to this comment

Grouped tabs? Other browsers have had that capability for a long time. Just goes to show you--Microsoft is not a leader but a follower.


Comment #2 by: 7he7th7rumpet on 24 Mar 2009, 05:47 GMT reply to this comment

Actually marytee, you are wrong. No other browser automatically assigns tab colors to tabs that originate from the same domain. It's extremely handy for those that have 20+ tabs open at the same time, like me. I can close all the tabs from the same domain, say weather.com, with a right click.


Comment #3 by: Steve on 01 Apr 2009, 04:41 GMT reply to this comment

Highly Unreadable!!! These TABs B L O W, any chance of being able to change the font color to black from white? a light yellow tab with white type is unreadable. a light grey tab with white type is unreadable. a light teal green tab with a background fade to white, with white type on it is unreadable. You can tell Microsoft brainstormed it again thinking cheap and not brining in a top design pro to work out the interface. I can never understand it?


Comment #4 by: Lawrie on 20 Jul 2009, 23:05 GMT reply to this comment

Actually 7he7th7rumpet, you're wrong too. IE8 doesn't group tabs basedon domain: from the IEBlog:

"The idea behind tab grouping is that tabs originating from the same source are grouped together."

So if you have 8 tabs open that all point to pages on weather.com but are not derived from the same source page , or a 'child' of that source, they won't all automatically close when you click 'Close This Tab Group'.

It does blow that you can't customise the colour scheme too. Peppermint green on a sky-blue backdrop is *not* a good look.


Comment #5 by: Hugo on 24 Jul 2009, 19:56 GMT reply to this comment

i wanna know how to un-do it because it annoys me as hell that i open a tab from one of the tabs i have first and if i have many more tabs open it goes to the end after all of them.

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