This tip maybe a bit late, months after Firefox 2 was released. Even Firefox 1 featured tabbed browsing. Well, just take this as a friendly reminder or for happen-to-be newbies there, here’s one for you.

In the days of the old IE 6, whenever you want to browse multiple websites at the same time, you have to open so many IE windows. This is quite irritating with your taskbar being overloaded with IE tabs and if you happen to be using Windows XP with taskbar grouping, it takes a while to switch to your other IE windows.

Firefox remedied that with tabbed browsing (which happens to be the latest addition to IE 7 as well). Now you can open multiple pages in one window and just bring up tabs when you want to load a new page. Neat, huh?

Now here are 5 tips for using tabbed browsing with Firefox 2.0 in Windows:

1. Ctrl + T
   The shortcut key for opening a new tab. It also automatically brings you to the new tab and brings your cursor to the address bar.
2. Ctrl + Tab and Ctrl + Shit + Tab
   Let’s you cycle through your tabs forward or backward. Alt + Tab would now be reserved for switching through your other windows. Also works great as a “boss key” for browsing NSFW websites (just make sure you’re chums with your network admin).
3. Right-click + T
   Works on links within a page. This opens the link target in a new tab. Wouldn’t work on JavaScript links though.
4. Opening All in Tabs
   Found as an option at the bottom of your Bookmarks folder. Opens all the bookmarks located there in tabs. Great for those who can’t just live without their favorite sites. Now you can open all of them at once.
5. Customize tab behavior
   More options are found in Tools -> Options… -> Tabs. You can whether new pages load in new windows or tabs, warnings when opening tabs, and tab focusing.

Tabbed browsing just made surfing a lot quicker and more organized. Make sure to exploit this advantage. So for those missing out on the experience better switch to Firefox or upgrade to IE 7.

Just a piece of advise though. You don’t want to load 30 tabs all at once. While Firefox can handle it, it might slow down your browsing experience especially if you run it on slower machines and slower Internet connections.