I've been asking the developers to make it not just tabs but window in window. You know, a solid grey background but being able to view and work in more then one image. Don't think it's gonna happen.
I think they're making a big mistake not doing that. The answer to my question was, just use multi window interface if you want two images open at the same time, but when you're on windows it's very annoying because when you accidentally click anywhere outside of a GIMP window, GIMP will be minimized completely and you have to search in your taksbar to get all the GIMP windows back up again.
So basically they are redesigning the interface so finally everyone being turned off by the it will try GIMP because it now looks normal and then they find that the single window interface lacks a basic feature and GIMP will get bad press again.