10.08.09
Happy Tabs Day
Today’s Camino 2 nightly builds enable tabs by default; that is, ⌘-clicking a link now opens that link in a new tab rather than a new window. After all, we’ve been adding all sorts of new tab-related features since Camino 1.0 (and especially over the past few releases)—more tabs per window, better overflow tab management, the ability to redirect links that want to open new windows into new tabs (“single-window mode”), better AppleScript access to tabs, a scrolling tab bar, the ability to rearrange tabs by drag and drop, and tab overview (“Tabsposé”)—so with all this development focus, it was high time that tabbed browsing became the default browsing mode in Camino.1
Moreover, as many other browsers have adopted tabbed browsing as the default mode of operation, users expect it to “just work” and potential switchers are sometimes confused by the fact that they have to open Preferences to allow ⌘-clicks to create new tabs. Users who prefer that ⌘-click open links in new windows are no doubt going to be a bit disappointed, but we believe this change benefits the majority of our users and potential users. If you’re strictly a window user, please give the new setting a try for a little bit; your may find your feelings have changed as tabbed browsing has become more powerful (I can still remember years ago swearing I’d never use tabs, but here I am [ab]using them). However, if tabs still aren’t for you, it’s easy to disable this setting by opening the Tabs pane of Camino’s Preferences and unchecking “Links opened with ⌘-click.”
As a brief house-keeping note, you may have noticed a lack of regular Camino development updates here over the past couple of months; August was an extraordinarily busy month for me, and September was occupied by the release process for Camino 2.0 Beta 4 and Camino 1.6.10. Fear not, however; Camino development has continued to make great progress, and we’re in the final stretch to Camino 2! I can’t promise when I’ll be able to return to regular posting of updates, but rest assured we are working steadily—and in the meantime, join us in having a Happy Tabs Day!
1 Amazingly, Camino isn’t the last Mac browser to default to ⌘-click opening links in new tabs; of the long-standing Mac browsers, both iCab and SeaMonkey still default to ⌘-click opening new windows. ↩
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