I use Firefox to regularly browse the internet wasteland.  I will also use Opera from time to time, and I love it enough to put it on the "Stuff We Use" list below Firefox.  I'm not enamored by Chrome, but hey... I've used it, as well.  What do they all have in common?  Besides other potential similarities that I don't want to hear about from any smart-alecks, the answer I'm looking for is tabs.

Tabbed browsing is not what I grew up used to.  For a very long time, it was Internet Explorer for me.  When I first discovered Firefox, it didn't take.  I usually don't adjust well to change.  I went back for a second chance and never looked back.  Firefox is now my staple: it checks my gmail every few minutes, I have it customized up the wazoo, and through it I've been able to learn even more about web design.  In other words, it's been a good time.  These tabs, though, are a double-edged sword.  On the one hand I love the freedom of opening new tabs while reading articles, or for opening images, or whatever else people use tabs for.  On the other hand, they've ruined my life.

Okay, so perhaps they haven't ruined it completely (that was done long before they came around, actually), but I certainly have a love/hate relationship with my tabs.  Why?  Well, as I type this, on my main computer's Firefox I have 20 tabs open.... 21 if you count the one I'm typing into right now.  And these tabs aren't all from today.  Oh, no... they're collected over weeks.  They're filled with things that I've come across that I want to look into or do something with at a "later time" from when I discover them.  They're not quite bookmark worthy, and even if they were - being tagged into my long list of bookmarks guarantees that I won't pay attention to them again for a very long time.  So, they sit there, begging for me to pay them attention.

I never pay them attention, though.  I think about it, but I don't usually get around to it.  I sometimes get annoyed that they are there and just do a clean sweep and add things to my bookmarks (the death knoll for "to-do" links in my life)... but they return.  They always return.  The tabs, they haunt me.  They are so easy to use, and yet before I realize what has happened they multiply and grow in numbers beyond what I am capable of handling.  They eat away at my soul and cause me more strife than the facts that I live at home and have no job... COMBINED!

Curse you, tabs.  Curse you.

Up Next: Why Having So Much Free Time Isn't Good For A Man's Sanity - The Mark Mushakian Story.