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Opera wasn't the first browser with tabbed browsing by far. There were a lot of Windows browsers that embedded the Trident engine, and some of them used variants of MDI for browsing. A few of them used tabs, the first well-known one being NetCaptor. Interestingly enough, it put the tabs on the bottom, which makes a bit more sense from a Fitts' Law perspective than putting the tabs near the other controls. This was a few years before Opera switched to tabbed browsing.

Fun to see NetCaptor mentioned here... I wrote it. The first version was released in 1998. I put the tabs on the bottom because HomeSite, the HTML editor that inspired NetCaptor, had tabs on the bottom.

Thanks :), noted and will make the edit.

Opera doesn't have multiple tabs so much as little mini-windows in the main window. You can tile and overlap Opera's windows, which is nice, but they're not quite the same as tabs.