Microsoft Fills a Patent for an Enhanced Tabbed Browsing

By | January 25, 2010


Microsoft Fills a Patent for an Enhanced Tabbed BrowsingSome time ago, Microsoft has filed a patent, designed to improve tabbed browsing functionality, which might be revealed in the upcoming Internet Explorer 9 release.

Abstract (as from uspto.gov):
The techniques and mechanisms described herein are directed to a method for managing and selecting one out of large set of open tabs in a tabbed browser. Browsing software is configured to provide a quick pick user-interface that visually displays the content of the several tabs, such as a by displaying a thumbnail for each tab. The thumbnails allow a user to easily distinguish between each opened tab.

The browsing software may also be configured to recognize a user selection from within the quick pick user-interface and in response, switch back to a tabbed window view and display the selected tab in that view. The browsing software may adjust the tab row so that the selected tab is positioned in a favorable position within the tab row. In addition, within the quick pick user-interface, the user may reposition the thumbnails and/or close the thumbnails, thus affecting the associated tab in the tab row.

Microsoft Fills a Patent for an Enhanced Tabbed Browsing

Internet Explorer 9

Mr. Manan has listed some of the patent features:

  • Drag and move the tabs within the Quick Tabs interface.
  • Tab thumbnails would enlarge on mouse-hover.
  • In case your tab row was over flowing with tabs and in Quick Tabs you were to hover the mouse on a tab not currently visible on the tab bar, the overflow icons would change appearance.

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About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism career back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

Comments (2)

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  1. forumchild says:

    so, is MS gonna sue all other companies(such as opera, ff, chrome, etc) of their browsers using IE’s tab browsing?

  2. Supacon says:

    Isn’t Microsoft basically trying to patent what other browsers have already had implemented for some time now? I’m not really getting how this is something special…