Based on a patent filed, it would seem that Microsoft plans to improve the functionality of its mosaic of tabs in Internet Explorer.
Since version 7 and also in version 8, Internet Explorer offers the Quick Tabs feature or Mosaic Tab. Like that offered by other browsers (Opera, Safari, for example), Internet Explorer displays a view of all open tabs. Thumbnails to easily find an open Web page.
Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) Manan Kakkar has found a Patent Technology filed by the Redmond company in September 2009. In the latter, describes a system and method for selecting a tab with a browser that supports them. Manan Kakkar assumed that this improvement of Quick Tabs to appear in the future Version 9 Internet Explorer.
Among these improvements, drag and drop the thumbnail view and therefore the possibility of an arrangement in his own way, expansion of miniature hover with the mouse. Another improvement is the visibility of a tab in the tab bar, when the thumbnail is linked pointing in Quick Tabs.
It is true that the mosaic of tabs is not really friendly in Internet Explorer, and some improvements are welcome. We would hope that there will be still further improvements. But regarding the user experience of Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft keeps secret.
What has been announced for IE9
At the conference PDC 2009 (Professional Developers Conference), Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows division and Microsoft Windows Live, said Internet Explorer 9 would deepen its compliance with web standards, and focus particularly on CSS3 or even HTML 5 (Standard still in draft state) whose support is beginning to be seriously lacking in IE over other browsers. The JavaScript performance are doomed to be improved. Another objective with the operation of the graphics hardware acceleration based on DirectX and support Direct Write, Direct 2D.
