In a move that can only be seen as a stop-gap measure that might slow down the encroachment of such third-party browsers as Firefox, Microsoft has done what it could. It’s put the tabbed browsing feature into the latest MSN TOolbar. There are other packages out there that do what Microsoft has done with the MSN bar - make it an IE shell, notably the Avant Browser. We’ll see if this move does any good at all.

We all know that the real changes will come with the release of IE 7 and we may have to wait until then to see integrated relief in the form of a raft of new features. As an Avant Browser user of many months, I think that Microsoft could do a lot worse than to either license it for IE 6 or buy the thing, outright. Avant Browser is just that kind of browser shell and already has 99% of the announced features of IE 7.

[Read Microsoft offers tabbed browsing - in IE 6]