Safari logoTabs, bookmarks, search forms, these are all features that we take for granted when it comes to browsing the web using our favourite web browser. We expect it to work, to be fast, and most important, it shouldn’t bother us with stupid behaviour or messages.

Every major web browser supports tabbed browsing these days, it makes it easier to maintain the websites you are visiting. Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, even Internet Explorer supports tabs. Seeing that the concept of using tabs has been around for a while, you’d think it would be trouble free, too bad you’re wrong. In this case there’s a problem with Apple’s Safari, a problem that could’ve been solved a long time ago as Safari has been supporting tabs since April 2003.

When you click on a link Safari opens it as it should, however, if that link has the target attribute specified as “_blank” it will open it in a new window. Sounds normal right ? In theory it is, but the problem is that Safari is the only browser out there that opens these link in a new window, rather than in a new tab. You actually have to press and hold the Command / Ctrl button and click the link in order to open it in a new tab. It may seem something small, but it can get really annoying when you don’t expect it to behave that way. I ended up searching for my windows many times, just because I thought I lost my sites for some reason, only to find out it was hidden behind the newly opened window.

Imagine the following, you’re working on a company related project and you need to search for information. You’ll open up Wikipedia, Google and perhaps your Twitter account to tweet about the fact that you just moved your mouse 5 centimetres to the left. You found the right website on Wikipedia and you click on the link, suddenly your window with the three tabs is gone and is replaced by the website you just opened. If you don’t know that Safari opens certain links in a new window, this can be pretty frustrating. Especially if you have little computer knowledge.

Not having the right behaviour was one of the reasons I stopped using Safari and downloaded the 3.6 Alpha version of Firefox. When I did some more research on Safari a while ago, I found out that there’s a plugin called SafariStand. However, a browser with such a good rendering engine and such a big company as Apple developing it should’ve had this behaviour by default. It’s a bit like installing a plugin for your car, just to make it beep when you left the lights on and you opened the door.