I have a feeling it was either omniweb or icab. But I’m probably wrong. And anyway, tabs existed in other applications before browsers adopted, rather than invented, them. Right?

simplebrowser had them before opera

Way to jump in with a quick retort, when GP already conceded that Opera wasn't the first browser with tabs. But it was arguably the first browser that popularized tabs.

Besides, their point was refuting the "Firefox invented tabs" statement, which is valid.

listen here poindexter if you're feelin froggy you can @ me in the parking lot about it and we can nerd out

It’s only a “retort” if you read it uncharitably, and there’s no reason to do that.

dont know what kind of googling prodigies you are, but I googled 'first browser with tabs' and it says the InternetWorks Browser was the first

They’re not googling. Google is useful but sometimes has incorrect answers. The truth is we probably won’t know the true first browser with tabs. It could have been before the one you found.

These people are saying “I personally used browser Z with tabs before your example Browser A was even released”. If enough people continue the chain, we’ll get to “the oldest tabbed browser that anyone on HN remembers using”.

The nice thing about these anecdotes is that they can generally be validated quickly and easily. But your google result cannot be validated easily.

you know, you're alright with me

Related to this, the first browser I experienced with tabs was a custom VB3 wrapper around shdocvw.dll (IE) somewhere around early Windows 9x that I wrote myself. I'm not suggesting I invented tabbed browsing and certainly that VB project never influenced anyone else, I just find it a fun anecdote.

The easiest way to track it down isn't looking for the oldest memory. It's looking for reviews of Firefox when tabs were added and looking for the ones that complain about that earlier browser doing it better.

There's also the antecedent called the Mozilla Suite, that Firefox branched off from. It still lives on, somewhat zombie-like, as the Seamonkey Suite.

I think tabs are a terrible ideas (and I have probably more than 200 opened right now).

I think the browser should just make windows and it should be the window manager responsibility to group them in tabs or show them side to side or do whatever it's needed.

Same for code editors.

I often times need to group together tabs from different applications and that's obviously impossible.