I already have a fixed set of tabs open for different use cases, and switch between them frequently. Adding a new tab to that temporarily would probably confuse me. I may try the tabedit / tabclose solution nevertheless though, I hadn't thought about doing it that way. The advantage being that I'd have one plugin less :)

Splits are not tabs.

Edit re below: OK, good point. But I would still prefer the plugin (and plan to install it) because I just don't use tabs, preferring to stick with splits.

True, but AlexSolution is saying that you can get the same effect without a plugin.

Open your split as a new tab. The new tab (i.e. that split) takes up all of vim. When you want to return to your splits, just close that tab.

A single mapping instead of two.