I’ve been using The NERD tree for a file list and minibufexpl for tab-like buffer management. To close a buffer, select it in minibufexpl and hit the ‘d’ key. If you want to remap the :bd command so it does the same thing, check out these tips – otherwise :bd will delete the whole window, which is very annoying. There is also a vim tip about using vim like an IDE, which has another implementation of kwbd (keep window buffer delete).
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Recent versions of Vim have native support for tabs. Try :tabnew .
Thanks for the tip! I did some experimenting and I like the feature. However it’s more of a complement to minibufexpl than a replacement – tabs need to have their own instances of NERDTree, so both together may be useful for editing multiple related projects with different directory trees in the same vim instance.