While users wait for Microsoft to push Internet Explorer 7 into beta -- and finally add tabs to match Firefox -- the Redmond, Wash.-based developer late Wednesday updated its MSN Search Toolbar with pseudo tabs for IE 6, the current version of Microsoft's popular browser.

The tabs, however, are implemented by the toolbar, and not by the browser itself, unlike the tabs in Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, and Opera. Hiding the Search Toolbar, for instance, disables tabbed browsing in IE 6.

Multiple tabs can be bundled together in what Microsoft calls -- surprise -- My Tabs, then opened with a single click. Unlike Firefox's similar feature, however, My Tabs is limited to one tab collection.

Tabs aren't new to the Toolbar: prior to its first preview in December 2004, it included tab functionality, but the feature was pulled at the last minute.

MSN Search Toolbar is part of a three-toolbar suite that also includes a search tool for Microsoft's Outlook e-mail client and another for searching local files from the desktop.

The updated software -- officially named "MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search" -- can be downloaded and installed from the MSN Web site. It requires IE 5.01 or later.

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