It was the first browser to have tabs. That simple feature was cool AF at the time, especially the “Reopen last closed tab” and “Duplicate Tab” features.
“Duplicate Tab” was awesome, letting you risk going down some sites rabbit holes without losing your starting context in the original tab.
Awesome innovative features, now natural requirements for any browser.
Not true. I was definitely using tabs in Firefox and Opera before Chrome even existed. I’ve used CTRL/CMD+SHIFT+T to reopen last closed tab in all browsers for many years now so I can’t remember if that existed as a menu option for people who prefer to use a mouse, but the guts of the feature itself was there before Chrome existed as well. (I avoid duplicating tabs so I can’t say if that existed before.)
I remember clearly when Chrome came out, it felt like this stripped down skeleton with less built-in features than I was used to, less customizability, and less features privacy that promised to be “fast,” yet didn’t seem any faster than a fresh browser install would normally be. The one innovation I associate with Chrome is browser-based online and offline web apps, but I don’t know if that started with them. (I’m guessing it probably did since they were in their heyday when that got to be a thing.)
I was so disappointed when Mozilla spent years trying to make Firefox more like Chrome (which meant stripping down features and customizability) to attract people-- which clearly wasn’t working-- and it’s been such a relief to see them get back to being simple on the surface but poweruser-friendly under the hood, recently.
small edit: to fix a mistake above (see strikethrough text)
Oh absolutely! I almost included more about who created tabs myself but my comment was already becoming a wall of text and I hadn’t used InternetWorks myself. 😅
Since you bring it up, I’ve wondered for a long time if the folks who brought tabs to browsers might have also worked on TabWorks-- a very customizable (and much prettier) alternative shell/GUI for Windows 3.x.
It was the first browser to have tabs. That simple feature was cool AF at the time, especially the “Reopen last closed tab” and “Duplicate Tab” features.
“Duplicate Tab” was awesome, letting you risk going down some sites rabbit holes without losing your starting context in the original tab.
Awesome innovative features, now natural requirements for any browser.
But it was all downhill since there.
Not true. I was definitely using tabs in Firefox and Opera before Chrome even existed. I’ve used CTRL/CMD+SHIFT+T to reopen last closed tab in all browsers for many years now so I can’t remember if that existed as a menu option for people who prefer to use a mouse, but the guts of the feature itself was there before Chrome existed as well. (I avoid duplicating tabs so I can’t say if that existed before.)
I remember clearly when Chrome came out, it felt like this stripped down skeleton with less built-in features than I was used to, less customizability, and less
featuresprivacy that promised to be “fast,” yet didn’t seem any faster than a fresh browser install would normally be. The one innovation I associate with Chrome is browser-based online and offline web apps, but I don’t know if that started with them. (I’m guessing it probably did since they were in their heyday when that got to be a thing.)I was so disappointed when Mozilla spent years trying to make Firefox more like Chrome (which meant stripping down features and customizability) to attract people-- which clearly wasn’t working-- and it’s been such a relief to see them get back to being simple on the surface but poweruser-friendly under the hood, recently.
small edit: to fix a mistake above (see strikethrough text)
I stand corrected.
But regarding tabs, according to
…
Oh absolutely! I almost included more about who created tabs myself but my comment was already becoming a wall of text and I hadn’t used InternetWorks myself. 😅
Since you bring it up, I’ve wondered for a long time if the folks who brought tabs to browsers might have also worked on TabWorks-- a very customizable (and much prettier) alternative shell/GUI for Windows 3.x.
Oh geez, thinking back to the “we had it first!” wars between Opera fans and Firefox fans about tabs back in the pre-Chrome days…