A couple of months ago I found out that I can use the mouse-wheel button (i.e. middle-click) to close tabs in web browsers. This is much easier, thanks to the larger surface area, than trying to hit the little “x” that is on most tabs. It works for other things than browsers too, like Notepad++ or tabbed conversations in IM clients. This got me wondering the other day when I was overcrowded by tabs in Internet Explorer 9’s taskbar thumbnail previews (see pic). I hovered over one I didn’t want open, gave it a middle click, and hey presto the tab closed! This works for any thumbnail preview, not just IE9. It surprising what a boost in productivity this gives so try it out today!
Update: I recently found out that Chrome & Firefox also let you middle-click the refresh button. This duplicates the curent page to a new tab. At first I didn’t think that was particularly useful but now I find I’m needing it all the time. It is especially useful if you accidentally navigate away from a page, like when you type in a search term to the address bar and hit Enter instead of CTRL+Enter. Now you can middle-click Refresh so you keep the search open in a new tab but can also navigate back to the previous page you were looking at in the current tab.
Thom's HeadSpace 
