3.5 Everybody likes tabs

Unlike most other text-based browsers, emacs-w3m has support for tabbed browsing(1). What is tabbed browsing, you might ask? It's very simple: it is a way to represent all active emacs-w3m buffers in a single window, by showing a line at the top which shows all the buffers in a simple and self-explaining way, each buffer being shown as a "tab". This line stays visible all the time and does not scroll with the rest of the buffer, so that you can switch to another buffer, or use the feedback it provides at any moment.

The easiest way to get the feeling of it is to just try, so go on and open an emacs-w3m session. If you didn't change anything to the configuration, the tabs line is active by default, it is this bright line at the top with a smaller rectangle that shows the title of the current page. Now create another w3m buffer (with G, for example): now you have two of these rectangles. These are tabs.

The most obvious use of tabs is switching: by clicking with the mouse-1 button on a tab, you make the buffer it represents active. It also works with the mouse-2 button. It's a very quick and easy way to work with several emacs-w3m buffers, you just have to point and click. (Yeah yeah, I hear you. You want to switch using the keyboard. Don't worry, it's also possible. It's explained in the next section. Now keep quiet and read on!)

Another nifty feature is the feedback it provides. If you are on a color terminal or window system, emacs-w3m shows the text in the tab in different colors to show the status of the page(2). For example, when the page is being loaded, the text is in red, and goes back to its default color (usually black) when the loading is complete. This way you can tell with a single glance at the tabs line if the page you're waiting for has arrived or not.

Finally, if the web page provides a favicon, it will be shown in the tab as well(3). More eye-candy for the emacs-w3m user!

User options:

w3m-use-tab

Whether to activate tabbed browsing or not.