Duh.

Sometimes I'm amazed at how clueless I am....

We celebrated Chinese New Year this weekend with my family (a little early). Somehow, we got onto the conversation of computers, then inevitably discussing Macs vs. PCs. We also started to discuss IM programs - MSN Messenger vs iChat. My cousin, Kenneth (who at age 4 taught my Dad to use a Macintosh in 1984) mentioned that iChat should use the same Tabs feature that is incorporated into Safari. (I should also note here that Kenneth is now almost 25, and at Med School at UCSF - did I mention how much time flies?).

Anyhow, back to tabs... I'm such a dork. I was like, "Tabs? You mean tabbing between the fields?".
He said, "No, you know, TABS. It lets you have one window open, with different tabs for each site..."

Oh yeah.
I've been using Safari for well over a year now, and I vaguely remember coming across the Tabs feature before. I noticed it only when seeing the "Open in Tabs" option for all of my folders. I keep a lot of folders in my Booksmarks Bar - all categorized. Most have several sites in the (ie: client sites, client sites local, finances, etc.,) I've never had a need to open ALL of those sites up at the same time.

So, the bottom line is: it never really occurred to me to explore the Tabs feature.

Because I'm a dork.

Until this morning.

I used to have 5 browser windows open, and each window had it's place on my monitor. In fact, Dick just said to me last week, "You have more windows open than any person I know". Which is probably true. It's not unusual for me to have 7-10 browser windows open at a time. But with the magic of the F9 key, it was still really easy to find things. Somehow, I thought I was organized.

So this morning, I recalled my conversation with Kenneth, and re-explored the Tabs feature. I created a new Bookmarks Bar folder called "everyday" and put the 5 sites that I regularly go to everyday in this window. Now I can have all of my regular sites that I cycle between in one browser window, with easy access to all. It's pretty sweet.

All this, at the same time that I'm thinking about making the switch to Firefox. (which I see also has Tabs.. but does it have a "open in Tabs" option from the bookmark folders?)

Sometimes it's a wonder that I manage to be productive at all....