Getting browser-style tabs in emacs

Question

Really new programming student here, and I'm trying to get tabs in emacs (browser style, like Aquamacs has).

So, how do you get tabs in emacs? A strip of labels showing me which buffers I have open, and clicking on one of them selects that buffer.

I have googled this extensively, but not being fluent in elisp makes it really hard to understand. I have installed the tabbar package, but I do not know where to go from here.

What do I want? Just tabs, and a command to open new tabs, for example C-t (or whatever is best).

Answer 1

As the other answers, tabbar is what you're looking for.
You need to copy it to wherever you keep your emacs files (if you don't have such a place - make one, tabbar will not be the last add-on you'll use :) ), load the file and start the tabbar-mode.
In the below code, the emacs files dir is .emacs.files and it is in my home dir.

(setq tabbar-file
(expand-file-name "tabbar.el"
(expand-file-name ".emacs.files" "~")))
(load-file tabbar-file)
(tabbar-mode 1)
(define-key global-map "\M-[" 'tabbar-backward)
(define-key global-map "\M-]" 'tabbar-forward)

In the above code, I also added binding of scrolling through the tabs to Alt-[ and Alt-].
As to opening new tabs - every time you'll open a new file, it will be opened in a new tab, so don't worry...

Answer 2

I have installed the tabbar package, but I do not know where to go from here.

The tabbar library provides a global minor mode named tabbar-mode, so you will want to enable that in your init file. If it's installed somewhere in your load-path then the following will work:

(when (require 'tabbar nil t)
  (tabbar-mode 1))

There is lots of documentation in the library's Commentary, which you can visit like so:

M-x find-library RET tabbar RET

Answer 3

Try this, it's called tabbar and should allow you to do what you're looking for.