Lo-Tek Tips

Back in the olden days, browsers had windows. No such thing as tabs. Don’t get me wrong. Tabs can be a great thing, as long as you pay attention. I prefer windows, but that’s just me.

For a long time, when you created a link on a web page, you had the option to specify that it opened in a blank window. Now, it opens in a new tab instead.

Two words: Pay Attention!

If you don’t notice the tab, you could easily think that the new page opened in the same window. This can lead to some unexpected situations. Consider this scenario:

• A friend of mine who shall remain nameless uses AOL for his email. He uses the web interface through a browser to read and manage his email.
• When he opens his Inbox from the AOL homepage, a new tab opens.
• When he clicks an email message in his Inbox, a new tab opens. We are now up to three tabs.
• The tab containing message has a link to his Inbox.
• If he clicks the Inbox link, guess what? You got it – new tab!
• Meanwhile, the original Inbox tab is just as he left it.

The State of Things

Here’s a principle that will help you with the big payoff: Let’s call the two tabs a parent tab (the one that opened the new tab) and child tab (the one opened by the parent.)

If you go back to the parent tab, you will find that the state hasn’t changed much.

In my friend’s scenario, here are some of the benefits of closing open tabs and going back to the original tab when finished reading and/or responding to the message:

• When he goes back to the Inbox, it’s about the same as it was when he left. Wherever he scrolled to, it’s still there. He might have gotten a new message or two, but otherwise, no change.
• Open tabs use memory. Closing them frees it up. This may have the effect of causing your computer to run faster.
• Even when you are not viewing a tab, it may be refreshing itself. Facebook is constantly reloading different parts of the screen. (That’s how ads change and you can see that someone just commented on your cat photo.) If you are on a slow connection, this will make it slower.
• In some cases, open tabs could be loading pages you don’t want, tracking your activities, and other malicious stuff. I always prefer to know exactly what’s running and who it’s talking to all the time.

My Modus Operandus

Here’s how I tend to work:

• I click a link in an email, which launches a browser.
• I click a link in a window that opens another tab and do what I need to do.
• I close the tab. (Tip: Ctrl/Cmd+W closes the current tab in most browsers.) I’m back to the original tab.
• Occasionally I’ll let a few tabs build up, but I always know which are which. I try very hard to avoid clicking a link in a tab that would result in a new tab containing a page I already have open.
• I often open a new window. (Tip: Ctrl/Cmd+N opens a new window in most browsers.) That allows me to start from scratch with just one tab.
• I tend not to open new tabs on purpose. I prefer new windows, because I have deeply integrated Alt+Tab (Windows) into my workflow. It switches between windows. I can very quickly go back and forth between a Word document and a web page, or between a web page and an email I’m composing.
• Being a keyboard guy, I tend to prefer keyboard-oriented commands. You’ve probably noticed a couple here so far. Copy, paste, and New Window are always in a menu somewhere. For some reason, developers seem to think that menus are confusing, so they hide them in favor of toolbars. Then they find the toolbars are confusing, so they hide those. In Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox (at least the versions I have installed on my machine) New Window is in the File menu.

I could go on, but I have to save something for next time!

Next up: File Manager? What’s that?