Is there a way to make alt tab only switch between active windows in the current application?

Lots of programs have a way to switch between tabs or pages within the application. With firefox you can ctrl-tab to switch tabs, and same with Pidgen IM.

Sam01 has the right answer, but you might find it buried in the avalanche of incorrect and incomplete answers. The answer is: use CTRL-TAB to switch between multiple windows or tabs of a single application.

Unfortunately no. The Alt=Tab key combination is monitored by Windows and is reserved by Windows. The applications aren't allowed to try to hijack it. If the application supports window switching, it has to find a key combination of its own. This is one of the reasons why MS Office now opens multiple threads on the taskbar instead of multiple windows in the same application. Alt-Tab is just plain convenient.

You can switch between tabs in Internet explorer or Mozilla firefox by using the Ctrl-tab keys. Hope that helps.

NO because this is in the GUI programming of the application. If it doesn't appear on the taskbar as multiple items, then you can't switch between them with alt+tab BUT there is possibly a workaround. If you have a graphics card from Nvidia or ATI, they have software to help manage your application windows (especially useful for multiple displays). To find out whether you have an ATI or Nvidia card: 1) right click on the desktop 2) go to properties OR personalize 3) if you have windows vista, click display settings. If you have xp, click on the settings tab. 4) You will see either ATi radeon or Nvidia Geforce and then a model number. For Nvidia cards download the latest drivers from here: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us For ATI cards, download hthe latest drivers from here: http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html and then download hydravision from here: http://ati.amd.com/products/hydravision/index.html Unless you know different, you have either windows xp 32 bit or vista 32 bit. When the installation is complete and the computer has rebooted there will be a new icon on the taskbar next to the time which will be either the nvidia or Ati logo. Double-click on this.

What many are saying that are going into depth is that the function is part of the WIN API.

In Excel you can use CTRL + PgUp or CTRL + PgDown to switch between worksheets. In Internet Explorer use CTRL + Tab to switch between tabs Outlook isn't an MDI application so there's not much binding it's windows together.

Ctrl+Tab This shortcut is not supported by all Windows applications but it is supported by Microsoft Office applications for sure. Also, you can use it to switch tabs in your Firefox.

Unfortunately no. The Alt=Tab key combination is monitored by Windows and is reserved by Windows. The applications aren't allowed to try to hijack it. If the application supports window switching, it has to find a key combination of its own. This is one of the reasons why MS Office now opens multiple threads on the taskbar instead of multiple windows in the same application. Alt-Tab is just plain convenient i agree