Safari, Firebird, and Tabbed Browsing

Several months ago, I heard all the fuss about tabbed browsing. I took a quick look at it and couldn’t understand why it was supposed to be the next great thing in web browsing. Last week, I read an article in the November issue of MacWorld magazine entitled “Unsolicited Advice” (Help Desk) that showed how to set up Safari to load multiple web pages at once with only a single click. I set up Safari to gather five of my favorite Mac sites (in a group I call “Mac Review”) with one click and haven’t looked back since. Using Safari’s Bookmark Bar, I’ve also set up an “Aviation” group (airplane scheduling, weather, and flight planning all at once) and a “Writer’s Groups” cluster that contains the home pages of my favorite writer’s organizations. Asking to load the group all at once and switching back and forth between the web pages with a single click, like having four or five pages spread out side by side on a desk, is a real kick.

I also run Mozilla as a browser, so I checked out tab browsing in Version 1.5, and it didn’t work the way it was supposed to. The Mozilla website talked about a leaner version of the browser/mail and news reader/html editor named Firebird. Firebird is a browser only, leaner and faster than Mozilla; and it claims tabbed browsing as its forte. I downloaded it, tried it, and love it. I’ve replaced Mozilla with Firebird on most of my Macs. While its tabbed browsing interface isn’t as elegant as Safari’s, it’s pretty close. I use Firebird for those pages Safari doesn’t render correctly.