Phil Weber informs me that Windows MDI apps have next / previous window shortcuts, Ctrl + F6 and Ctrl + Shift + F6. Unfortunately, on my XP box there is not a single MDI app that responds to the former. I checked the MDI Guidelines and found an alternate, Ctrl + TAB and Ctrl + Shift + TAB, which works in every MDI and Tabbed application I tried except for Eclipse.
In Picking up the Tabs I had intentionally avoided mentioning MDI because the Tabbed interface is an extension of MDI that elliminates some of the child window manipulation problems. Tabbed UIs generally respect MDI conventions and most of the arguments against Tabs are applicable to MDI.
The challenge for Mozilla and other browsers is to either address the UI warts that Tabs create or to provide better cross-window navigation.
Update: Found the app that was intercepting Ctrl + F6, but have no clue why it was doing that.
Also, there are some SDI apps that emulate MDI behavior for cross-window navigation. MS Word 2002 is one example, Ctrl + F6 / Ctrl + Shift + F6 will bring up the next / previous document window.
