Single click to activate last tab in windows 7 internet explorer (like FF)

Question

Windows 7 annoyance: the jump lists are fine for hovering over the taskbar items, great go ahead and show me previews of all the open instances and maybe I'll pick the exact one I want.

However this works different between IE and FF. Hovering over the FF icon just shows me the single FF window, not any of the tabs I have open. Clicking it means my FF window opens and I'm at the last tab I was on. Great, normal behavior, one click and I'm in.

Hovering over the IE icon shows me all the tabs in my single IE window. Ok, but I just want to go back to my last active IE tab. I can't! I am forced to click twice to go back to any IE tab.

Sure it's a minor annoyance, but as I'm developing throughout the day I find it more and more annoying. Any ideas to fix so I can just click the IE taskbar icon once and it pulls up the last tab I was on?

Answer 1

Is [WIN]+[TAB] a sufficient solution (use your mouse wheel to make it better)?

Also, you can right-click on the taskbar, go to Properties, in the Taskbar tab, set "Taskbar buttons" to "Never combine" and this will do what you're asking for although it will also also show the labels which you may or may not want.

Answer 2

I agree, this bothered me as well. I think it will become a problem for a lot of users once all the browsers adopt IE behavior.

You can CTRL click on the group of icons, this will open last active window.

You can also create a registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced!LastActiveClick=1

If you create this key then your first click on a group of icons will take you to the last active window.

You can get .reg file here

If it is just the IE bothering you, you can also disable this in Internet options - General - Tabs - Settings - Show previews for individual tabs in the taskbar

Answer 3

"If it is just the IE bothering you, you can also disable this in Internet options - General - Tabs - Settings - Show previews for individual tabs in the taskbar"

• That did it for me, thank you.