To clarify the sequence you describe: if you are reading an
article body in tabbed mode -- opening the child article means
hitting the Spacebar or ^N without switching panes, am I right?
no I was just using the mouse to navigate, selecting the article in
the header pane - which for me moves to the body pane - clicking on
the header pane again to take me back and opening the child
article. I've done this a number of times with
address@hidden in
alt.binaries.pictures.fractals but I doubt if that is unique.