Windows Explorer Tabbed Browsing For Windows 7

QTTabBar was one of the best, if not the best, tabbed browsing plugin for Windows Explorer. The original developer stopped working on the software in January 2009, and it became apparent with the release of Windows 7 that the original version of the program was not compatible with Windows Explorer in Windows 7.

That was a huge problem for users who came to rely on the program's functionality in previous Windows editions. Finally, after a year of inactivity, Paul Accisano decided to continue the project. The main goal of the project is to make QTTabBar compatible with Windows 7.

The recently released alpha 4 of QTTabBar 1.5 already works under Windows 7, and while it is still an alpha version with bugs that need to be sorted out it works reasonably well already.

The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. It automatically offers to kill and restart the explorer.exe process after installation. Users who do not want to do that need to restart the computer, or log off and on again to see the changes.

Windows 7 users need to enable the tabbar by clicking on View > Toolbars > QTTabBar.

This displays tabs in Windows Explorer. Folders can be opened in tabs by dragging and dropping them into the tabbar. It is then possible to switch between tabs with the mouse.

A right-click on a tab displays a context menu with various options, including the ability to lock tabs, create groups, close and clone tabs, copy the path and to change the tab order.

The Explorer plugin works reasonably well, it does however have a few bugs that need to be sorted out. Saving files for instance did display "file does not exist" warnings after the process, even though the files have been saved properly in the location. The error messages went away after uninstalling QTTabBar, and appeared again after installing it for a second time.

QTTabBar in its current form needs some work done. The developer however has achieved several milestones so far, with the most important one being compatibility with the Windows 7 operating system. The program can once again become a must have for many Windows users, if the bugs are sorted out. Lets wait for the beta and final versions before a verdict on that though.

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