Let’s see what’s new in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 for tabs management comparing to Visual Studio 2008:
Visual Studio 2008 tabs
Visual Studio 2010 tabs
Close tab button is now on the selected tab. Close button is also become visible when mouse is over a non selected tab:
Tab background on mouse over
Notice that not showing close tab button on non selected tabs doesn’t save horizontal space as place for close tab button is always reserved.
Context menu for document tab now has a Float command that allows document window to leave bounds of Visual Studio 2010 workspace:
VS08 context menu for document tab
VS10 context menu for document tab
The same floating as it was allowed for non document windows in Visual Studio 2008 (open link in new tab to enlarge):
Floating Window1.xaml out of Visual Studio 2010 main window
Visual Studio 2010 doesn’t have Multiple documents Window layout option (aka MDI) any more:
VS08 general options
VS10 general options
Everything else is the same in VS10: there is only one row of tabs, new tabs are opened on the left, when tabs don’t fit the available space they are hidden, when hidden tab is selected it goes to the left corner, tab names for ASP.NET projects contain full path.
Update – Noah Coad has blogged about a registry setting to open tabs to the right in VS 2010:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\General] "DocumentDockPreference"=dword:00000001
Finally, some words about Tabs Studio support for VS10. Underlying tabs and windows implementation in Visual Studio 2010 is now WPF based, no more Win32 windows. Tabs Studio’s injection subsystem need to be rewritten to accommodate for this changes.
Tabs Studio Blog (organizing Visual Studio document tabs) 
Nice write up on WPF based window and tab interface.
Comment by Noah Coad — May 27, 2009 @ 3:16 am
Hi,
Good post and an excellent plugin. I really like that you focus on this tab problem in VS. Several of my colleagues basically think I’m silly because I like tab management.
But. I’m a bit hesitant to pay for a plugin to a piece of software that already costs me several hundred dollars.
If I buy a license now, would it be good for VS10?
Whats your pipeline on rewriting it for VS10?
Why not make it opensource; that way the community can help you?
Comment by Christian — March 2, 2010 @ 2:46 pm
Christian,
If you buy a license now, it will be good for VS10 and all other Tabs Studio upgrades. The latest Tabs Studio version works in VS 2010 RC and I hope it will work in VS 2010 RTM in April. Tabs Studio has extensibility API and style customization, so it can be enhanced by the community.
Comment by Sergey Vlasov — March 2, 2010 @ 8:17 pm
VS2010 graphical style is pure crap. While competitors offer a nice modern UI, microsoft seems to be stuck back in the 80s where 2d plain colors were nice. They even have no decent tabs.
Comment by Mika — October 15, 2010 @ 2:55 am