UPDATE!

They guys at Steam listened to us users and added with today’s Steam Client update friends chat with automatic tabbed chat. While they were at it, they added tabbed browsing to the in-game overlay browser as well! The same hotkeys you use in Firefox/Internet Explorer to navigate tabs works in Steam too.

Steam client update released

Client Update – Valve

A Steam client update is now available. To apply the update, click the File menu inside of Steam and then select "Check for Steam Client Updates…". The specific changes include:
New Features

• Updated friends chats to use new tabbed chat interface (see Friends tab in the Settings dialog to turn off opening in new tabs by default)
• Updated in-game overlay browser to use new tabbed browsing interface (Use Middle click on links to open-in-new-tab)
• Tabbed Browser/Chat HotKeys: Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab to switch tabs. Ctrl-W, Ctrl-F4 or Middle click to close tabs.

July 24, 2010 | Author stranded |

Enable the latest Steam Beta to access this highly desired feature – tabbed chat! Although it’s lacking few things like automatically open the incoming chat message as new tab or middle clicking to close the chat tab, I’m sure they will work on it asap.

Here’s the changelog:

7/23/2010

• Tabbed user chat / web browser
• Fixed unused game tags still showing up
• New non-blocking game uninstall dialog
• Improved client shutdown times