Tabbed Browsing for your Folders

There are some of us out there who feel that the days before tabbed browsing was discovered, the world was a sad, sad place. It’s almost like going back to the stone ages. The way tabbed browsing has simplified managing our open websites is truly amazing. This made me reflect sadly on the fact that we can’t do such a thing with our Windows file manager (I’m talking about XP here. I have no clue what Vista offers). So often it happens that we have so many folders open that our taskbar is completely cluttered with them. Managing those open windows is more trouble than it is worth.

And that set me thinking. How wonderful it would be if the folders I open just open inside a tab and not a separate window. It would make the job of managing them really simple. As it turns out, there are some ways you can do it. Here are a couple of them:

• Chuck your default file manager and use a new one. Try Xplorer2.
• Use your web browser to open folders. In fact, in IE if you type a path in the address bar, it will open the folder right there. Firefox does too, but the interface is really bad. Type c: in both IE and Firefox and you’ll see what I mean. So I suppose using IE7, which has tabbed browsing, pretty much solves the problem. But for people who prefer firefox, you might want to install this add-on. It brings the native windows look when you open folders in firefox. Here’s how it will look:

So that’s one problem solved. But all this makes me wonder why there should be two different things called web browsers and file managers. Why can’t there be one elegant interface to both?

Thunderbird Add-ons

I’ve been using Mozilla Thunderbird for almost a month now and I must say, I think it’s pretty good. The only mail client I am familiar with apart from Thunderbird is Lotus Notes which I used during my internship at IBM . So, when I made the switch to Thunderbird, I sorely missed Notes Minder, the mail notifier that comes with Lotus Notes. Basically Minder is very similar to the Thunderbird mail notifier, except that it is possible to keep the Minder running even when Lotus Notes is closed. The advantage here is that Minder will be sitting in your system tray all the time and bring a pop-up whenever you get a mail, thus saving you precious taskbar space which would otherwise have been used up by Notes.

When I started using Thunderbird, I badly needed something which would make Thunderbird go away from my taskbar and magically reappear whenever I get a new mail. When my search for a Minder-like application failed, I turned to add-ons. I finally got an add-on that serves my purpose. It’s called Minimize To Tray. You can install it and set it to send Thunderbird to the system tray whenever you minimize it. After you have done that , you can use the Enhancer to make Thunderbird start during system startup and minimize it to tray instantly. Of course, there is this mail notifier option in Thunderbird which means that you’ll always be notified of incoming mails. These two add-ons are available on Firefox also, though personally I don’t like it when Firefox runs away when minimized.

Also, there are many themes which give you a break from the boring default theme. I particularly like the Vista theme.

To all you Thunderbird users out there – hope this helps!