The emacs tabbar.el package adds (buffer)tabs to each window and comes standard with aquamacs and can be added to emacs23 with the emacs-goodies-el package.
Are any of you hardcore emacs users actually using tabbar? I'm sort of used to having tabs, but I would like to know if working without them could be more productive, and if there are other ways besides checking your bufferlist (C-x C-b) to get an overview of your current project files.
As a side note, I really like textmate's project drawer (and tabs), but anything similar in emacs looks just plain hideous.
Answer
I've tried using it, but I felt it constraint my workflow rather than improve it. There are a lot of excellent Emacs modes to help with the organization of many buffers and I simply don't feel mapping buffers to tabs is one of those ways.
Just think about the most basic scenario - a lot of tabs. How different programs deal with it - limit the maximum tabs(IntelliJ IDEA); enable tabs bar scrolling(Firefox); infinitely reducing the tabs size(Google Chrome); creating rows of tabs(IntelliJ IDEA)... None of this solutions is that great and by not having tabs in Emacs we have one less problem to worry about. At least this is my subjective opinion - others will most certainly disagree... I personally need nothing more than ido and and iswitchb.
A video of ido in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsgPNVIMkIE