Why do multiple tabs of Safari show as different windows in the Taskbar of Windows 7?

Question

If you open more than one tab in Safari running on Windows 7, they show up as if there are multiple windows, while technically, they are not windows, just tabs inside one window.

I think this behavior is not usual compared with other browsers like Firefox or Chrome or any other application for that matter.

Any idea why this happens or is this a bug?

Safari version: 4.0.4

Answer 1

This is a taskbar enhancement that is available in Windows 7 for applications that are Windows 7 aware and can inform the OS that there are internal contexts that can benefit from displaying multiple views to the taskbar. Chrome and older versions of Firefox don't do this but IE8, Office 10 apps, Firefox 3.6 and the current version of Safari do. Newer version of apps wil lincreasingly support this and other Windows 7 Superbar features like context menu jumplists.

Answer 2

This is by design. Each tab gets its own thumbnail preview in the Taskbar, so you can switch faster to the desired tab.

Internet Explorer 8 does the same, and it's possible with Firefox 3.6 too: Unlock thumbnail previews for Firefox 3.6 on Windows 7

Internet Explorer 8:

Firefox 3.6:

Apparently it's foreseen in the version 5.x of Google Chrome.