IE8 (Internet Explorer 8) beta 2 was released in the last week of August 2008. That’s less than 20 days back. And what’s new about it? Surprise surprise… Colored tabs. No I didn’t develop it for them. And I don’t have enough money to file a patent or a litigation. I love Firefox, I love Google, and I love the guys suffering the competition 
. This is the least I can do in the spirit of open source software. So let’s take a look and see how it works.
They have the tabs uncolored by default. When you open a child tab (open a link from one tab into a new tab, etc) the parent and the child tabs get colored. This helps identify tabs into groups. The color has got nothing to do with the domain or the url. There are *only* ffive fixed colors available which go in a cycle. This feature is called “tab grouping”. Here’s a small crop for you which you can click to view in full. Essentially this feature is of limited use since IE opens the child tabs next to the parent tabs by default. Buy who knows if coloring by domain is being planned.
Another revolutionary innovation is that of imitating the awesomebar which looks like the following.
One noticeable change is that the browser has chosen to follow standards which is a very welcome change. But this comes with a twist. If only Google decided to make Gmail standards compliant. Hell they have even come up with a non-standard browser too.
There’s one point I’m left wondering though. Why doesn’t everyone else learn a lesson and stop building browsers . After all IE is doing a fine job; doesn’t it (migrating from 6 to 7 to 8)?
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{ 18 comments on Who Stole My ColorfulTabs?… read them below or add one }
Cool idea. I happen to think it’s one of the best out there, but maybe that’s just me. Thanks for your interesting ideas
Been using your colored tabs seemingly forever… wonderful addition to a great Browser., so thank you VERY much for that!
Seems like there is no such thing as a “safe” idea anymore… everyone copies everyone in a digital world & Microsoft is the King of copying ideas and presenting them as their own. If you’re a fan of movies as I am, you will notice an unending Darwinian process of copying good ideas or even blatant plagiarism… ie sequels & redue’s. Case in point, the new Keanu Reeves re-make of one of the epic Sci-Fi movies, “The Day the Earth stood still” originally starring Micheal Renny. The twist this time around is that the Global Warming crowd has apparently sponsored this as a giant Advertisement to support their “theory” that the Media has now accepted as fact.
This was a movie that didn’t need to be made… much like Goonies II.
With regard to browsers, this is a good idea (that you had 1st) and I’m happy to see MS building this into the latest iteration of IE. It just would have been nice of them to in some way acknowledge your contribution to the pool of ideas… hell they even eventually went back and compensated the guy whose code they based their whole company on when they sold IBM “DOS”, so a small token your direction wouldn’t even be a rounding error for their accounting firm.
Keep up the good ideas… I do think last tab carrying a consistent color to easily identify that status, is a positive idea.
Mark (aka Mag of MagChat)
http://www.magchat.com
I hate to play devil’s advocate, but we can’t ignore that a significant chunk of what makes Firefox so great came from Opera. Not colouring tabs, of course, but plenty of other great features.
Such ‘appropriation’ of ideas has long been part of the browser world, for better or for worse. I think you just have to chalk this up to the old axiom, “Imitation is the highest form of flattery”.
BTW thanks again for such an awesome extension. Yours is part of the must-haves for any install of FF I do.
You use Firefox which is open source, your blog runs WordPress (which needs updated to 2.6.2 btw) which is open source, yet your small contribution to the ecosystem is not open source. Why is that?
I will not install ColorfulTabs because it’s not open source. I think it’s deplorable that plugins for an open source product are not open source.
It may be a morality issue for many but I like to keep things simple. If someone built and released a software just so that people using it would in turn release their own software under opensource, they were wrong.
I use wordpress, I use drupal, I use Firefox and a lot of other mozilla software. But does that in any way imply that I should release my software as opensource or not?
Again, as far as my software is concerned, what is missing? Only a opensource license? Or maybe you are planning to somehow take the idea and build upon it?
I work on my software till the time I feel that I can add more value to it. It will then be out for the world to take and develop further.
My small contribution is not opensource and I don’t find a reason why it should be given that I want to reserve certain rights over it.
Are I’m the only who wonders that the tab color changes every time i’m starting firefox? I switched the ‘random’ off. Do I soemthing wrong or is this on purpose?
The idea is very nice and I like it in princip.
Check out gnu.org, specifically the “What is GNU?” section. GNU is generally accepted as the founder of the open source movement.
I think you are wrong. I think you’ve missed the point of what open source means. I think your plugin should be open source.
Thanks for pointing that out. Having been on the internet for an age now I can summarize this in my simple words.
I am aware of my options and choose to exercise and reserve the rights on my intellectual property.
That being said, I’m not discussing this any further. Thanks for expressing your views.
Hi! Your colored tabs are wonderful, as is the fading. I recently switched my Firefox theme to Aquatint Black Gloss, but now my tabs won’t color
The fade still works, however no matter what color I try, they stay black. Is there any way to have the best of both worlds?
Thank you for all you share!!
I completely agree with your position on reserving your rights to your software. The fact that, in the case of Colorful Tabs, you don’t choose to demand payment for the fruits of your labor is irrelevant. It’s your choice, just as it’s Callum’s choice not to benefit from your generosity, and you don’t need to justify it.
Hi Mike, Thanks for your comment. See you around.
Your Idea and colorful Tabs and especially its realization is really great. I was searching for such solution for a long time. And I have no idea why the “big players” do NOT have such inspiration on theirselfs… (…really pathetic…)
Making it “only” freeware and not OpenSource is no problem for me. As everybody can see, you can handle the programming job perfectly…
Much thanks and good luck for the realization of your visions!
I personal like the way IE8 colors tabs in groups vs random or by domain. When you are working on two projects at the same time and end up going to several different domains while doing so, it makes more since to make all the tabs for one project one color and all the tabs for the other project another color. Any chance we could get an option to make ColorfulTabs group similar to the way IE8 does? Thanks!
I hope someday you add the feature of colorize tabs by groups of links opened like IEb2 does… I don’t like the idea of just colorize just by domain… I think should be an option to colorize and group related sites too…
This is all new to me. I read your site, ideas and find it all fascinating. I love the idea and will definitely download. I appreciate your generosity in offering your product for free. I also recognize your reasons for wanting to keep control of your ideas. There are a lot of people out there that think all ideas should belong to the general domain. They will never understand that if we gave everything away, we would never have the time to explore and finish our own work. Many years ago my bro/law did a summer of work for a major pharm. company and solved a problem they had been working on for years. They promptly patented and shelved something that would have benefited millions because it would have cost them money in the long run. Just because someone has a good idea..doesn’t mean others will develop it to the benefit of the masses. Do what you are doing and don’t listen to others. You are doing what is right for you. Good work!
I’d like to second the call for an option to group by opener, like IE8 does — and let’s not forget, like Tabbrowser Extensions did a long while ago. It might have been bloated and buggy, but that was the birthplace of the “colored tabs” idea way back in Firefox 1, for all of those who worry about whose “original idea” it was — man, who cares, as long as the best ideas are implemented? Everything’s a ripoff of another idea these days. It’s called “progress.” “Oh, man, I can’t use this good UI implementation — somebody else did it first!” How silly would that be? IE8′s colored tabs work much more like the old TBE tab grouping than like ColorfulTabs anyway. Everybody can now relax.
But back to the point.
Tabs opened from another tab clearly have some relationship in the user’s mind as such. So allowing tab coloring based on the parent tab would probably be useful. I know that that’s personally the feature I’ve been waiting for ever since Firefox 2 was released, with which TBE wouldn’t work. +1
I like Mozila Firefox the most. I am using it from the last 6 months & found it the best browser for all purposes.
I think It sucks. It does not work properly with alien ware theme manager. Had to follow these steps to get back to internet explorer 7.