TABBED BROWSING

Sometimes you want two Web pages open at the same time. Perhaps your students are comparing and contrasting alligators and crocodiles with facts from one site and an online Venn Diagram on another site. Or, maybe you're bidding on an unusual vase on eBay and want to investigate the seller's claim about its origins by referring to a site by the vase's manufacturer.

In either case, you can click File > New Window and open two windows, but that can be a little clumsy. Instead, try tabbed browsing in Firefox. Here's an example of tabbed browsing in the classroom:

• Open Firefox.
• Type the words "Discovery School" in the location bar and click Enter/Return. Firefox should take you to "http://school.discovery.com".
• Click the link for Puzzlemaker, and then click Criss-cross puzzle from the dropdown menu.
• In Step 1, type "State Capitals."
• Click File > New Tab (or CTRL T on a PC, Apple/Command T on a Mac).
• Type "State Capitals" in the location bar. Firefox now should take you to "http://www.50states.com". Note that just above the Web page for 50states.com, you'll see two tabs; one for this site and another grayed one in the background for Puzzlemaker.
  
  You now have two tabs for your two sites. Click the Alabama folder on the 50states page to find out what the capital is for Alabama, then click the tab for Puzzlemaker, skip steps 2 and 3, type "Montgomery capital of Alabama," and hit Enter/Return.
• Repeat those steps to add 5-7 more state capitals to your crossword puzzle.

Think that's cool? Well, you also can move the tabs, placing them in whichever order you want. Or how about creating tabs for your favorite news sites and setting them to open as your home page? See the Firefox page for more information about tabbed browsing.

Next: Bookmarks -- live and otherwise.