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Show HN: My small program from 2007 that gave Internet Explorer tabs
- EGreg 4y agoBack then, I used to write little programs like this: https://www.oocities.org/trentgamblin/sizehack/hackman.zip https://www.oocities.org/trentgamblin/sizehack/hackman.zip https://qbix.com/Recycle.exe https://qbix.com/Recycle.exe (video game) and programming columns like this: https://www.flipcode.com/archives/Theory_Practice-Issue_00_Introduction.shtml https://www.flipcode.com/archives/Theory_Practice-Issue_00_I... Those were the days. Simple, and to the point stuff.
- lagrange77 4y ago> https://www.flipcode.com/tpractice/ https://www.flipcode.com/tpractice/ The Issue links seem not to work anymore. "[an error occurred while processing this directive]"
- dontbenebby 4y agoCool stuff Greg! Tabs are what made me switch away from IE to Firebird.
- denysvitali 4y agoFirebird?
- kome 4y agoPhoenix
- ews 4y agoCorrect: Phoenix came before Firebird, which came before Firefox.
- apocalyptic0n3 4y agoAt some point, wasn't it also just referred to as the "Mozilla Suite" and was a single do-it-all program? That had to be nearly 25 years ago now and I'm blanking on exactly what it was. Also... 25 years later and I'm still using Firefox daily. Go figure.
- kmeisthax 4y agoYes. Phoenix was intended to cut down and slim down Mozilla Suite into something less bloated.
- garaetjjte 4y agoSeamonkey is still sort-of alive: https://www.seamonkey-project.org/ https://www.seamonkey-project.org/
- whitten 4y agoThat looks interesting. Does the code use XUL as a framework and is XULRunner still being maintained?
- garaetjjte 4y agoI think they are still using Firefox 56 as a base and backporting security fixes.
- slightwinder 4y agoMozilla suite was the original Mozilla Browser, which was their continuation of the Netscape Software. Phoenix/Firefox was a brand new browser, rewritten from ground up, based on the new generation-engine (which was later named gecko) on which Netscape already worked when they open sourced. The old suite was simply a mess and too complex, so they created a brand new browser, Firefox. Ironically, Firefox later became a similar mess, because of which they rewrote it to what then was named Firefox Quantum, with which they removed the old XUL-Extensions. And now everyone is unhappy again.
- therealmarv 4y agoname of Firefox before they were changing it (they said there was another open source project with name firebird too) https://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_releasenotes/en-us/firefox/releases/0.6 https://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_...
- flatiron 4y agohttps://firebirdsql.org/ https://firebirdsql.org/
- denysvitali 4y agoOh I see! I only knew the Firebase SQL and wasn't aware of the former name of Firefox
- denysvitali 4y ago*firebird sql
- matsemann 4y agoCool that your website is still running! How did the program do what it did? How did the referral program and skinning contests work out?
- EGreg 4y agoThe website was actually integrated with the program! I wanted to keep it super simple: You download the exe and launch it. Then you get a free trial. If you like it, you can create an account on the site, and activate the program! I think that the registration process was quite unique for its time (and maybe even today)... what do y'all think? You can try it out, and it still works so many years later haha: http://tabbed.org/register.php http://tabbed.org/register.php
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- qsort 4y ago"The best 3 skins are going to receive a Gameboy Advance" is just perfection. How did you implement it? Was there some kind of API you could hook into to extend iexplore? Sorry if it's a dumb question but I don't know anything about windows programming.
- EGreg 4y agoI just used Win32 APIs, and I made a window that "stuck to" the bottom of IE windows, and followed them around. The tabs were rendered there. I forgot what I did for maximized IE windows. To make the tabs "switch" I basically hid and showed the IE windows, by their window handle. I think Win32 allowed you to do that to windows of other applications, back then.
- wolpoli 4y agoI remember learning about the Win32 API, and then proceed to delete/move UI elements of other Window using VB. I immediately tried to move the "continue" button of WinZip. Does anyone know if these APIs are still allowed or are they locked behind the UAC prompt now?
- jdsfighter 4y agoYou're bringing back waves of nostalgia. I used to frequently read AllAPI.net and come up with mischievous implementations for my own amusement. A quick Google Search netted the following project (https://github.com/microsoft/CsWin32 https://github.com/microsoft/CsWin32). Looks like my evening is gone.
- brewmarche 4y agoCool find! I’ve only known <https://github.com/dotnet/pinvoke https://github.com/dotnet/pinvoke> which offers ready-to-use NuGets for various Win32 APIs.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Ozzie_osman 4y agoI was at Google when Chrome launched and had a 20% project that let you queue up interesting web pages to read later (kind of like Pocket does). I tried to pitch it to the Chrome team but it never made the cut (maybe the right call). But I kept using it myself until it broke.
- j5155 4y agoIf I remember correctly, a read later feature was actually recently added to Chrome…I guess it wasn’t as good of a call as you thought!
- tibbydudeza 4y agoIE was so hackable - remember some Chinese firm (Maxthon) built a complete new browser by just embedding Trident and using ActiveX.
- ajstiles 4y agoI did something similar (NetCaptor)… starting in 1997. It’s cool to see that Maxthon is still around.
- tibbydudeza 4y agoYou the OG - think I used Netcaptor before Firefox came along.
- solardev 4y agoYou were my hero back in the day! I remember spending so much time editing the Wikipedia entry for NetCaptor to get it more visibility. For a LONG time, even after Firefox, NetCaptor was still the best browser around. I used QuickSearch all the time (and still have that habit to this day). Next to Tim Berners Lee, IMO, you are the web's true unsung hero. THANK YOU a million times for bringing the single biggest improvement to the web browser in two decades.
- chrisbrandow 4y agoyou are still my hero…
- ajstiles 4y agoGet out of here CB
- dchest 4y agoAdam! NetCaptor had the best browser user experience ever. Thank you! :)
- Scene_Cast2 4y agoNot just IE - things like MSN Messenger and uxtheme.dll had lots of mods. I also remember greasemonkey (from a bit later of a time) being huge, too. I wonder why it's less of a thing now. Is it because of the increased difficulty (frequent updates), or is it because there isn't as much need for such mods?
- forgotmypw17 4y agoSomething similar for Opera from back in the day: http://web.archive.org/web/20021015195623/http://digdug.cx:80/opman/opman.gif http://web.archive.org/web/20021015195623/http://digdug.cx:8...
- Beltalowda 4y agoDidn't Opera already have tabs by 2002? IIRC Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox had them since the first releases as well, or at least very early on in the early 2000s.
- forgotmypw17 4y agoThis add-on was written with Opera 3.x in mind, which was MDI, but did not have tabs.
- slightwinder 4y agoOpera didn't had "true tabs" until version 6. In earlier version they had MDI, later they added Buttons for accessing single sub-windows (IIRC since version 4), but this was a different experience from actual tabs as other browser had them at the time.
- TazeTSchnitzel 4y agoIt's funny that this was written in 2007, when this finally became an official IE feature.
- midzer 4y agoCrazy Browser from ~2000 was another browser (IE based) which had tabs.
- uxamanda 4y agoI like that simple pricing model. $10 if you like it after 2 weeks, free if you refer 2 people. Guessing it was honor system, curious how well it worked.
- EGreg 4y agoYep, I kept it simple. But, it wasn't the honor system. It required you to make an account, and then pay with PayPal. Then it required you to activate the program by entering your username and password, and sending a request to the server: http://tabbed.org/register.php http://tabbed.org/register.php
- nyanpasu64 4y agoCould you spin up two other machines with different email accounts, and refer the program twice to yourself? This trick worked (and possibly still works) for getting free Dropbox storage.
- witheld 4y agoIt’s not a referral of the referred accounts don’t pay
- trbleclef 4y agoWho won the Game Boy Advance?
- xeromal 4y agoI used something called Avant browser back in the day and I recall it being the first browser with tabs that I ever saw. I was really young when I used it, but I'm pretty sure I used it for years until I discovered Firefox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avant_Browser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avant_Browser
- philliphaydon 4y agoI think opera predates it but I believe BookLink is credited as first browser with tabs.
- xeromal 4y agoYeah, I think avant was an opera clone but using IE to render pages for compatibility.
- cobertos 4y agoHuh, how much money did this end up making out of curiosity? Sustainable in any way?
- nsgi 4y agoDoes this still work? Windows Explorer still doesn't have tabs
- joe_guy 4y agohttps://www.stardock.com/products/groupy/ https://www.stardock.com/products/groupy/ Groupy might interest you.