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You know something was revolutionary the moment it has been taken for granted. Every browser worth its salt today adds tabs so the user can keep track of multiple web pages. It is like squeegee, a piece of black rubber attached to a strip of metal for siphoning off water. So how can there possibly be anything new?

Google's answer was to put the tabs on top. The new Chrome browser may be focused on pure speed, but having the tabs on top has created a lot of interest in the browser world. Don't believe me? Check out the Firefox add-on site (

https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/) and search for Chrome. You will find several add-ons devoted entirely to mimicking the Chrome style. Is it revolutionary? It depends. Firefox's claim to the browser throne is heavily dependent on its ability to be customized beyond just adding toolbars. This ability to add a personal touch is a lot like showing up to a hotel room you get to decorate for vacation and the one thing that compels customization is finding a layout that enhances the amount screen space that can actually be used by a web page. I know that I put the tabs on top in my own Flock browser, which is really Firefox with a specialty towards interacting with social sites like Facebook.

The Flock browser, when first starting up gives you a "My World" tab that interacts with everything from Facebook to RSS feeds. It is not quite a home page like iGoogle tries to provide a user, but it can be a useful tool for keeping up with multiple activities on different sites like Facebook, MySpace, Digg, and.... ok, enough already. If this tab is not comfortable for the user, there are other ways to interact with all those places on the web users tend to congregate. There is a media stream feature that expands onto any page and it makes liberal use of side bars, complete with tabs there as well so that it is possible to quickly sort through the activity on Facebook, MySpace, Digg ... oh, you get the point...

Opera added to tab functionality by giving us speed dial. Speed dial shows up in another tab and contains snapshot pictures of our favorite web sites. This visual recognition was so compelling and useful for me that I became a devoted Opera user for about a week. But as usual, I found several add-ons on for Firefox that provided me with the same functionality, or even more, including one I could organize into several tabs based on however I wish to organize my bookmarks. Speed dial must have had a big impact because

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