[HN Gopher] Overcoming Tab Overload ___________________________________________________________________ Overcoming Tab Overload Author : tmfi Score : 98 points Date : 2021-05-14 17:39 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.scs.cmu.edu) (TXT) w3m dump (www.scs.cmu.edu) | jxramos wrote: | Is there a public demo of it posted anywhere? | spython wrote: | A few years ago I've argued that a tab is the wrong metaphor, | wrong unit of interaction: | https://rybakov.com/blog/open_tabs_are_cognitive_spaces/ | | I am currently working on a new and fun approach to managing this | kind of cognitive spaces, hopefully to be published this month. | kuratkull wrote: | "... or ashamed by how many they had open" | | What is this? I for one am proud of my (minimum) 4 dozen open | tabs on average. | | But on a more serious note, as a SE I rejoice when I see a "<5 | minutes read" article. If it's more than that I just leave it | open (if it seems interesting enough). Usually I go back to my | backlog during the next week or so and read the ones I still deem | interesting based on the title and a quick scroll through, those | that don't catch my interest any more or are just too darn long | will get C-w'd. | | Also when I have a few dozen tabs open in my phone I just send | them to my desktop(s) and close them on the phone - they were | either too long to be read on a phone, or required some | investigation before a commitment. | jzoch wrote: | Tree style tabs on the side of my window absolutely changed my | computing life. I stopped seeing tabs as a collection of what Im | doing and instead started using them + the browsers inclination | to save my tabs across restarts to track everything. | | Ill have a tree of tabs for blogs im reading, a tree for work | stuff, a tree for amazon orders, etc. All that context can be | closed in a single click. Ill have hundreds of tabs open (but | asleep!) and just pick the tree im interested in. Dont need to | save bookmarks or save articles for later - they are all there | always. | wvenable wrote: | I have multi-row tabs on Firefox (just requires some chrome CSS | customization). I use 3 rows of 30 tabs with enough space so I | can read the title. | | I just open every new link a new tab. It's not uncommon, if I'm | doing some kind of research, to have over 100 tabs open. In any | other browser, that's basically unmanageable. | jlokier wrote: | I agree, I'm the same. People who sneer at large tab | collections don't seem to realise that when they can be put to | sleep, tidied away (various extensions allow groups to be | folded), they are more like advanced bookmarks and working | context. Or, they think there is no justification for having | such collections. | | For me they are working context for different projects over | years. Working on project X a month ago? 6 months ago? Great, I | can go back to where I was. People have told me I "need" to | close all tabs and if I need working context, copy links and | notes into some kind of knowledge-base. But I tried that, and | in practice a "context switch" from project X to activity Y | takes hours and occasionally days to write up. Making | knowledge-base notes is valuable, I do it sometimes, and that's | how I know how long it takes me. But it takes a long time so | it's not always the best use of priority when activity Y | beckons. There is usually not enough time. | | I asked people what they do to tackle my sorts of projects. The | answers were always the same: Some ums and ahs, and it turns | out they don't. They just don't take on the same kinds of | things. I would really like to learn from highly productive | "clean desk" people, working on similar projects to mine, how | it is done, but to the best of my knowledge I've never met one. | | So sleepable tabs it is for now. There's still room for better | organising. Tree style tabs aren't very searchable. The content | of the pages is even less searchable, and it would be helpful | if there were a way to go back in time to an earlier snapshot | if the page is removed. I would really like them to be | integrated into other tools. I tried Org-mode (I use Emacs all | the time) but the one feature lacking in Org-mode is the | ability to capture and show a collection of web page content | decently, so it hasn't worked out for this kind of knowledge | capture. There are commercial tools that claim to be what I'm | really looking for, but I'm not going to store such a major | part of my working life in closed commercial software. | | I had to stop using the Tree Style Tabs extension for Firefox, | unfortunately, because it was slowing down the browser | terribly. This wasn't Firefox, or the tabs. It was the Tree | Style Tabs extension. | | It's probably some trivial algorithmic O(n2) somewhere, but it | reached the point where opening a tab or clicking on a tab, or | doing other things in Firefox that should be near-instant would | take 5+ seconds, and the browser would take 5 minutes to start | up, even though almost all tabs start up asleep. There is no | good reason to be this slow, because most tabs are unloaded | most of the time in Firefox. And indeed when I disabled TST but | kept the tabs, everything became fast. | | _Sidebery_. After trying out other extensions I settled on | Sidebery, which is working out well so far. In particularly, it | 's very much faster than TST for large numbers of tabs, and | doesn't appear to slow down the browser during non-tab | operations. It's also working out nicely for me in other ways, | and works reasonably well with containers. | | (There are some quirks: Dragging sometimes just fails, refuses | to move some tabs, or a tab even "disappears" until Sidebery is | turned off and on again. Moving a list of tabs to another | window can be very slow, about one a second. The "panels" tab- | grouping feature is odd because it's the same list of tab- | groups in every window, which doesn't make sense; in most of my | windows there are empty panels as a result.) | benhurmarcel wrote: | > I asked people what they do to tackle my sorts of projects. | The answers were always the same: Some ums and ahs, and it | turns out they don't. They just don't take on the same kinds | of things. | | And what are these kinds of projects that you are the only | one to tackle? | crazygringo wrote: | Is what you're describing any different from just bookmarking | all the tabs in a window to a new folder and closing the | window? | | That's what I do. And then just open the whole folder as tabs | in a new window when I go back to something. | | Then the advantage is that I can give the folder a name, a | date, tags, nest it under a grouping of folders, etc. | | Plus I can back up bookmarks which gives me huge peace of | mind. I've been burned before by my browser "forgetting" my | tabs before on restart, as well as browser sync bugs, so I | don't put a ton of faith in the longevity of tabs. | | Even if tabs are sleeping, if you have 100 different mini- | projects going on from the past year, do you have... 100 | different windows open all the time? How do you even find the | window you need? | jtolmar wrote: | > Is what you're describing any different from just | bookmarking all the tabs in a window to a new folder and | closing the window? | | Tabs are formed automatically, closed easily, and organized | by the order you opened them in. | | Bookmarks require going through a multi-step dialog, | removing them requires another dialog, and they're | organized by manually creating a nested folder hierarchy. | | I think most excessive tab use is down to bookmarks not | having the best UX. | plorkyeran wrote: | Why do you think you can't back up your tab session? I've | had firefox corrupt the sessionstore file a few times over | the years and when that happens I just open up Time Machine | and restore the last good version. | harshalizee wrote: | Yup, grouping in tree style tabs is a godsend. I largely ended | up sticking to Firefox over chrome mainly due to this | extension. | lightfooted wrote: | I'd like to try this. What browser do you use? I see that it's | a feature for Vivaldi and I also see a Chrome extension. | zo1 wrote: | Not OP, but Tree Style Tabs is for Firefox. | jrcii2 wrote: | Thank you so much for sharing! This is a game changer - I'd | been using two separate windows and manually dragging | things around like a noob. | eitland wrote: | Now you also probably see why many of us prefer Firefox. | | And: this might be hard to believe but it was much better | before - extension wise. | all_usernames wrote: | I switched to Firefox for Tree Style Tabs. | generalizations wrote: | I only stay with Firefox for tree style tabs. | | I think, the day chrome makes TST possible, is the day | Firefox loses a large fraction of it's remaining power | users. | jeanchen wrote: | I highly recommend Tabs Outliner, a Chrome extension | kirubakaran wrote: | https://histre.com/ does tree-style web history | visualization. This is a personal knowledge graph app I'm | working on. | twobitshifter wrote: | I was actually a big user of firefox panorama. I know that it | wasn't easy to discover but it was the best idea of tabs I've | seen. Expose, grids, and multiple desktops work the best for | switching windows, why not have it for tabs? | | I think that with the right desktop environment we could | completely get rid of most tabs. Windows and ie were terrible | with opening new windows which made tabs a necessity, but really | they should be used for grouping related pages. | andrewaylett wrote: | It's still around, as a fork of a fork: | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-tab-... | | I never really got to grips with having different sets of tabs | within the same window -- that's the kind of thing I use | multiple windows for. But I still have the extension installed | because it's the easiest way to show several hundred tabs in a | way which means I can avoid loading the content just to close | tabs. | bityard wrote: | There have been so many forks of this, and they have all been | buggy or gotten stalled. This one in particular randomly | forgets some of your tab groups. ("you had ONE job!") | | The closest thing that works for me is | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tiled-tab- | gro... but I'm not thrilled with the user experience. | chatmasta wrote: | I would love to see a Miro-style, infinite canvas, tiling tab | manager. If I zoom out past the page, show me a canvas with | thumbnails of all my tabs, that I can click and drag to group or | arrange however I want. Then let me zoom into one of the | thumbnails to switch to that tab. | | Basically Apple's mobile Photos.app interface but for browser | tabs. | MatthewBF wrote: | No zoom out, but has tile like views (grids, lists, kanban, | etc.) https://www.partizion.io/ | chatmasta wrote: | Looks cool, but requires a server to store your open tabs, | which is less cool. | sizzle wrote: | Safari does this natively, you can pinch to zoom out with the | magic trackpack or keyboard shortcut: | https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/352694/can-i-disab... | | https://i.stack.imgur.com/lxfU9.png | | Is this what you are describing? | chatmasta wrote: | Sort of, but only in the sense that it's a grid. I want way | more creative control. I want pan and zoom, the ability to | move and resize thumbnails, and some grouping/clustering | mechanism. Maybe some "gravity" type thing where if I move a | tab near another one they snap together. Nested grouping | would be cool too. And it needs keyboard shortcuts that I can | use to manipulate the groups of tabs and navigate between | them all. | andrewaylett wrote: | Panorama doesn't quite do that, at least not with that | affordence, but it's close: https://addons.mozilla.org/en- | US/firefox/addon/panorama-tab-... | alin23 wrote: | Safari on iOS actually does that exact thing when the device is | in landscape mode. | ksec wrote: | Doesn't Tab Overview in Safari on macOS already does that? ( | Without the Drag and Drop Part ) | | The problem is its current implementation completely kills your | SSD if you have too many tabs. The problem has been going on | for years. To the point I have to manually disable Tab Overview | gesture and icons. | jlokier wrote: | Safari's Tab Overview is unfortunately not like the OP's | idea. The lack of dragging, and also because there's no way | to zoom out further and make visual groups. And I suppose | being horribly slow with many tabs makes it very different | from the OP's idea too. | | I also found Tab Overview is a disaster if you have too many | tabs. I've occasionally been looking at Google Maps and done | pinch-to-zoom-out. Big mistake: Safari zoomed out of the page | instead and tried to show Tab Overview. That scheduling | loading every tab that was previously in a sleeping state, | just to show the thumbnails, and would typically show as | using 30-40GB memory while I realised I'd have to kill and | restart the Safari process to get back to work. | | I like Safari, and switched to it from Firefox because | Firefox was getting very slow. (Turned out to be the Tree | Style Tabs extension, not Firefox itself). | | But it eventually I found Safari is good at seeming fast | while using a huge amount of memory that slows down | everything else on the system. It was not unusual to find | Safari using a lot of swap and increasing over time, and | being the reason other things I use for work were getting | slow. | | I switched back to Firefox and found, rather pleasantly, its | memory use rarely shows higher than about 10GB. | ksec wrote: | >and would typically show as using 30-40GB memory while I | realised I'd have to kill and restart the Safari process to | get back to work. | | I have the exact problem with pinch to zoom. I had to | disable it to stop Tab Overview from loading, once ran out | of memory it will start paging everything to SSD, which is | why I said it is basically kill the SSD. | | I still dont know why the Tab Overview wouldn't | automatically become a list view once it is over certain | number of tabs. | daly wrote: | Is it ironic that I opened this in a tab? | | I'd like a browser function that says "open a text file and save | all the URLs" | Jap2-0 wrote: | I saw mention of this on HN somewhere previously, but I've | found that Tablist[0] is simple (a couple dozen lines of code) | and works well. | | [0] https://github.com/slymax/tablist (links to Chrome and | Firefox extensions there) | Hamuko wrote: | I actually used to use AppleScript to grab open tab URLs in | Chrome but I switched to Firefox and AFAIK, Firefox doesn't | support AppleScript. tell application | "Chromium" set tabCount to get count every tab of | window 1 repeat with i from 1 to tabCount | set currentUrl to get URL of tab i of window 1 end | repeat end tell | jmholla wrote: | Somebody shared this in a different comment, but the OneTab | extension looks like exactly what you are asking for: | https://www.one-tab.com/ (minus it being builtin). | dpflan wrote: | Here is their browser extension for "rethinking" tabs: | https://www.skeema.com/ (currently invite + waitlist). Was really | hoping for images of the actual, HCI-research-informed UI update, | but alas. | daralthus wrote: | I can highly recommend Tabli [1] an open source chrome extension | that you can use to save and restore groups of tabs very quickly. | | [1] https://www.gettabli.com/ | daralthus wrote: | Skeema sounds something I would try, but fully open source is a | must. | catchmeifyoucan wrote: | Hey, I'm building Amna (https://getamna.com) Tabs + Tasks. This | research made my day. | | I think my findings with users are consistent with the | researchers. Improved focus, and feeling less overwhelmed, and | the larger context management aspect of things goes away when you | browse with tasks offloaded from your head. | | Amna works by managing your Chrome Windows. Instead of organizing | tabs after you've done your work, you start with the task first, | and click on it. That way you can "scope" a browser to a specific | goal, and toss it when you're done. It saves your tabs as your | work. | | It's still a WIP (the website and product are kinda out of sync), | you can still try it out and pass along feedback :) | azhenley wrote: | Stop using tabs for your code and start using our tool, | CodeRibbon: | | https://utk-se.github.io/CodeRibbon/ | Assossa wrote: | Any plans on bringing this to VS Code? | azhenley wrote: | It certainly isn't easy, but we are trying! | https://github.com/utk-se/CodeRibbon/issues/80 | amadeuspagel wrote: | My main problem with tabs is that they function as an additional | window manager, meaning I'm constantly using two window managers | at the same time, and getting confused between them. For example, | I can use Ctrl+Tab to cycle through browser tabs and Alt+Tab to | cycle through windows. I can't use either to cycle through | everything I have open. | readflaggedcomm wrote: | Appears to describe a tab grouping extension, but the closed beta | (and lack of screenshots) suggests beta testing is machine | learning to hash out the UI and grouping criteria. Unless they | plan for it to be a service. | crazygringo wrote: | I just wish there were a way to save _page state_ along with a | bookmark or similar. | | Sometimes I'd really like to close a ton of tabs, or just close | my browser, or a whole window, and reopen tomorrow. | | But I'm relying on scroll position to know where I am in 20 | different documents, or login credentials that only last for 24 | hours, or certain comment threads that have been expanded while | others have been collapsed, or my position in a video, etc etc | etc. | | And _all of that gets lost_ if I close a tab or even restart my | browser to upgrade. | | I just want to serialize the current DOM/source files and | JavaScript/window state to unserialize it later. Sure, network | connections will break but websites can usually handle that. | | Because while the organization/usage of tabs/bookmarks is one | thing, a HUGE roadblock to closing tabs is losing state. | | I'm sure it wouldn't be even close to trivial for browsers to | build, but it still would just be _so_ helpful. | diego898 wrote: | This is a huge problem for me as well. If you find something | please report back! It would be a huge benefit to me as well! | FlingPoo wrote: | With Chrome (at least on Windows), if you use task manager to | kill the Chrome process, then run Chrome again, it will ask you | if you want to restore the tabs. It will remember all of them, | and the point (scroll position) of each tab. | | Clearly Chrome is keeping this info up-to-date in case it | crashes (or someone kills it in task manager). So if its | already doing this, they should add in a feature to to it | manually, so I don't need to kill the task. | kirubakaran wrote: | I'm working on this for https://histre.com/features/save- | restore-tabs/ | pseudalopex wrote: | Is it end to end encrypted? | catchmeifyoucan wrote: | Hi. I may have something for ya. I'm building Amna | (https://getamna.com) which manages tabs with tasks. | | Amna can do this (kind of). If you don't explicitly "close" a a | browser window within Amna, it will just minimize the window. | So it preserves the state (e.g scroll), while still giving you | freedom to work on something else with a clean slate. It's not | perfect, since the tabs aren't really closed, they'd be just | out of sight. But it's a start in that direction. On the flip- | side, in case your computer shuts down or whatever, the tabs | are saved still. | | One challenge I've run into state preservation is auth, a lot | of websites actually log you out (e.g. AWS Console, Sendgrid), | even if you have them open in the background. | lowbloodsugar wrote: | Minimize window? | swiley wrote: | > a way to save page state along with a bookmark or similar. | | This is next on the todo list for the browser I'm writing. I | have a lot of ideas for it but I want to get some basic | javascript working first. | [deleted] | fabrice_d wrote: | This is (bugs withstanding) what Firefox does if you choose | to"Restore previous session" int the General/Startup section of | about:preferences . This feature is provided by a Gecko | component called the the session store | (https://searchfox.org/mozilla- | central/source/toolkit/compone...). | qbasic_forever wrote: | Yeah I've been relying on this for about a year and have been | really impressed. It's the first restore browser session I've | ever used that just works. I never get "oops corrupted | session, start over!" errors, etc like I used to get with | chrome. Everything just fires back up with all the tabs, all | the extensions, even all the different browser windows I had | before. And it handles ungraceful shutdowns/restarts really | well (which sadly are far, far too common on this early | generation Ryzen APU laptop and the current mainline Linux | kernel :( ). | spython wrote: | Perhaps Webmemex is what you are looking for? | https://blog.webmemex.org/ | | More specifically freeze-dry, code for page state saving: | https://github.com/WebMemex/freeze-dry | alsetmusic wrote: | The article refers to their "new" tab / task management tool. The | web page[0] for it has no information or screenshots. Anyone have | a link to see the tool in action? | | [0] https://www.skeema.com/ | catchmeifyoucan wrote: | After some digging, I found some more information here: | | https://www.fastcompany.com/90635776/the-twisted-psychology-... | conorjm wrote: | Long time lurker, first time commenter here.. | | We've been working on an angle to this, https://cutout.app | | It's a visual, spatial interface for collecting content of | multiple media types, in one place. And, you can collaborate, | live, with others. It's designed for web-based research. | | An infinite canvas space, to index key references, in a manner | more conducive to communicating and presenting thoughts and ideas | - an alternative, or compliment, to lists of bookmarks and stacks | of tabs. | QuadrupleA wrote: | Here's a radical solution - close tabs when you're done with | them. | | There's a little known feature in browsers called _bookmarks_ | that 's like tabs, but they don't consume any RAM or bandwidth | when you're not using them, and they don't clutter your UI. You | can search them, group them into "tab folders", even synchronize | them across devices. | | Spread the word - bookmarks are the future. | shard wrote: | That's the problem, I have nearly 100 tabs open _because I am | not done with them_. | bityard wrote: | I _do_ close tabs when I'm done with them. | | The problem is that I have multiple things I'm working on and I | don't want to close the dozen or two tabs open that I have | related to it while I'm still working on the project, because | looking up the bookmark, or finding the URL, and then scrolling | the right spot is many times more work than just keeping the | tab open and switching back to it when I need it. | | My favorite Firefox feature of all time was "Tab Candy" which | was later renamed to "Panorama" It allowed you to automatically | group tabs by project or context and let you switch between | them seamlessly. Firefox decided to kill it and there is | nothing like it now, all of the closest alternatives--when they | actually work--require you to manually save and reload groups, | which is not effort I'm willing to make. | micropresident wrote: | Given that almost all screens are widescreen, the fact that | browsers don't have a sidebar of tabs is absolutely retarded UX | design. | | Though this one seems to be okay: https://addons.mozilla.org/en- | US/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs... | lstamour wrote: | Since March, Microsoft Edge based on Chromium supports vertical | tabs, just click a button in the tab bar to turn it on: | https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2021/03/04/amp-u... | | I believe back in the day that Opera was the first browser to | commonly support the feature. And I remember using Firefox and | Mozilla extensions for tab management a decade ago. The more | things change... | wolpoli wrote: | Vertical tab in Microsoft Edge is a game changer for me. With | it, it is easier for me to scan what tabs I have open, which | makes it easier for me to close tabs that I no longer need. | kube-system wrote: | Vivaldi does | zaptheimpaler wrote: | Genius idea! Most websites have too much space on the sides | anyways, this would be perfect. It simple but I never thought | to look for this - just got an extension to do it and it seems | great. | 1MachineElf wrote: | I am one such tab-overloaded computer user. | | There are a few tools that help me effectively manage a large | number of tabs. (No, Firefox's Tree Style Tabs isn't one of them | - while it is great, it is not powerful enough for me.) | | The best experience I've had so far is with Tabs Outliner for | Google Chrome and Chromium-based browsers. I find that it's UI | requires the least amount of clicks and remains performant even | when I have a thousand open tabs and hundreds of thousands of | saved tabs. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs- | outliner/eggk... | | My two main gripes with Tabs Outliner is that it is not FOSS, and | that it often forgets that I've purchased a license for Google | Drive sync. | | I have yearned for a FOSS alternative to Tabs Outliner. The best | one I've tried so far is Tab Fern: | https://cxw42.github.io/TabFern/ | | I love the Tab Fern concept and it would be my primary choice but | for the following two issues. First and least consequential, the | performance is close to but not 100% on par with Tabs Outliner. | Second, you cannot open a single saved tab as with Tabs Outliner | - instead it will open up the entire window. This is a headache | to deal with when your Window has a lot of tabs (it's also a | feature that's on the Tabs Fern roadmap.) | | I badly wish there was a Tabs Outliner or Tabs Fern for Firefox. | Perhaps architectural differences between Chrome and Firefox mean | that it will never happen. In lieu of that, I've settled on | Session Sync for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en- | US/firefox/addon/session-sync/ | | Session Sync is pretty awesome, especially so because it's also | FOSS. It can effectively manage the same amount of tabs as Tabs | Outliner while avoiding both of the issues I've mentioned for | TabFern. The main problem I have with Session Sync is that these | things all require more clicks. For example, if you want to close | a tab using either TabFern or Tabs Outliner, you can find the tab | in the listing (presumably you searched for it to save time :) | and there is an icon right there to close the tab. With Session | Sync, you actually have to right-click on the tab before you are | presented with the list of available options, which include a | Delete option. While this is inconvenient, it's still perfectly | workable, and it also has the benefit of slick | import/export/backup/sync options that the other two are missing. | | As for Skeema, the Chrome extension described in the article, I'd | give it a try (if they accept my request for invitation) and | would like to see if it could supplant either of the 3 | alternatives I've mentioned. | arduinomancer wrote: | I don't understand the "having a million tabs open workflow" that | seems so common | | I frequently move 1-2 tabs to the left side and use "close tabs | to right". Probably do this 4-5 times per day. | | If I end up needing something I just look in history or ctrl + | shift + t to get it back. | | Having too many open feels super distracting to me and makes it | harder to focus. | | I also use bookmarks a lot too, so that might be the difference. | kordlessagain wrote: | How do you feel about full text search and image extraction and | classification for those URLs? | jcun4128 wrote: | My thing is a chrome extension dumping all open tabs. But that's | all it does. Also a centralized personal store of info, so I can | save something for future research... have a scatter brain, | randomly researching stuff. | | What I wish had reliable persistence is Windows 10 virtual | desktops. | stzsch wrote: | I wish there was a way to completely force firefox to keep only | one window open. | | I imagine that would help with my tab-hoarding, as I tend to | branch into more windows (up to ~50) once they reach too many (20 | or so) tabs each. | flobosg wrote: | Previous discussion: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27095701 | kordlessagain wrote: | Hi Mike. | alfl wrote: | I've opened this in a tab and intend to read it later. | Arrath wrote: | Doing this, and then never ever following up on it, was how I | learned that Chrome on Android changes the tab count to ':D' | once you go over 100 tabs open. | ksec wrote: | Same here, it is acting like a reading list. Mostly because | Bookmark sucks. | pessimizer wrote: | Fixing bookmarks would cure tab hoarders like me. | jrcii2 wrote: | What have you tried? Just curious as I use Pocket and I am | somewhat satisfied with it, though I rarely end up reading | any of the articles I bookmark. | pessimizer wrote: | I've never seen anything that gave me the impression that | it would help, but at one point I was brainstorming a | firefox extension a lot like the one described in the | article, which is making me hopeful. | sumtechguy wrote: | I use my tabs like a stack. The bookmarks are the long term | overflow. | | At the end of the day the stack is closed out or put into | bookmarks for later looking at. I then have a set of | folders of 'look at later'. If later is greater than some | time period I just delete the whole folder. Once a month I | look at the overflow. Most of the time it is more of a 'why | did I care about this' and just blow it away. It is a | variation of the empty mail box. Inbox needs to be done. | Then the 'done' folder. There is no real stack or tree. | That way lies madness (I have tried). | | I try to keep my tabs in context of whatever I am doing. I | max out about 10-20 (6 at the moment). Past anything like | that and most of them are useless. | | Bookmarks are for 'I know I will need this in the future' | everything else I can search for again. | andrewla wrote: | The real problem here is that the "back" button doesn't really | make anyone happy. If it were instantaneous (like the page was | kept alive in an invisible tab, essentially) and preserved state, | then 75% of the use cases for tabs would go away. | | The remaining use cases are more around opening a bunch of links | from the same page, so we'd keep tabs around for that, but maybe | auto-group them with the page of origin for some | contextualization. | bityard wrote: | Huh? The back button renders the previous page absolutely | instantaneously for me in Firefox and Chrome. I am plenty happy | with the Back button. The problem is that my browsing is not at | all linear. While reading one page, I'll open 3 or 4 links in | new tabs to read once I'm done with the current one. (I have | done this already on this very HN comments page.) | colordrops wrote: | Brave on android recently added a feature that automatically | groups tabs. It's quite nice. | paulpauper wrote: | >Internet browser tabs are a major source of friction on the | internet. People love them. People hate them. For some users, | tabs bring order and efficiency to their web browsing. For | others, they spiral out of control, shrinking at the top of the | screen as their numbers expand. | | how about multiple layer tabs | | I am a big fan of hoarding tabs. Bookmaking a page can sometimes | result in the page being different when reloading or not working. | Tabs stay permanent in memory can be referred to later in an | unchanged state. It is like the digital equivalent of a library. | I can always defer to an open tab when i need something. | leephillips wrote: | It sounds like you would enjoy this new browser: | | https://lee-phillips.org/permatab/ | rubyist5eva wrote: | Vivaldi has this, it's actually quite useful. | lyall wrote: | I've found doing something that sounds crazy very helpful in | overcoming my own personal tab overload: automatically closing | tabs after they go ignored for a certain amount of time (~12 | hours for me). It's garbage collection for tabs! I use the Tab | Wrangler Chrome extension[0] for the job, but there are others | too. | | Turns out that I don't actually care about the vast majority of | tabs that I leave open--but can't seem to close!--and the | extension makes it easy to re-open any automatically closed ones | that I did happen to care about. The result is logging on each | day to much less tab clutter than I left the night before. | | 0: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab- | wrangler/egnjh... | mlac wrote: | Same here. You can do this on iOS with tabs that are open | longer than a day, but I don't think this is a built in feature | for safari on MacOS. I find it useful on the phone where I'll | often open multiple tabs (navigate through to the new tab and | leaving the old one open in case I need to go back) and | completely forget about them. | | https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-automatically-close-t... | naggie wrote: | I used to have many dozens of tabs open statically, kind of like | a TODO list I never get round to. Some tabs are open all the time | for email, chat as well. | | I've eliminated those tabs and now have tabs related to what I'm | currently doing only. There could still be dozens, but | importantly they do get closed. | | To prevent the static tabs, I do 2 things: | | 1) Map tabs I monitor (email, chat etc) to a streamdeck, pressing | a physical button every time I want to check | | 2) Save those static "TODO" tabs to a task manager[1] and treat | them as tasks. | | [1]: My own task manager: https://github.com/naggie/dstask/ -- | saving the URL in note means I can open the tab in a browser | again in a command (open) | namero999 wrote: | Opera solved this problem egregiously with workspaces. No need | for extensions or other tricks. This feature alone is worth a try | of what is regardless the most ergonomic browser I've ever used. | dole wrote: | I love OneTab, being able to dump 50-100 tabs out to a running | page of links to restart the browser is simple peace of mind to | me. | imilk wrote: | I love Onetab as well. The problem I often have is sending a | lot of tabs to Onetab, then never looking at them again. Which | may not actually be a problem and more of an indication for how | "important" the tab actually was. | | The dream for me would be if Onetab has a search feature that | allowed you to search the text on all the tabbed pages that you | saved. Because sometimes you save a tab because of a specific | topic, but the topic is not in the Title of the page and it can | get lost in the clutter. | | Or maybe more useful, a search service that just crawled the | pages in your Chrome history, rather than the entire web. | NwtnsMthd wrote: | I don't need a better way to manage the tabs I have open I need | to quit the habit of opening dozens of them. Its digital | hoarding. | | Maybe it's overly dramatic of me to compare it to hoarding, it | does legitimately increase productivity. But it also tends to | spiral out of control now and then (for me). | qwertox wrote: | I miss the Tab Mix Plus Firefox extension so much. I had 3 rows | of tabs with more via the scroll wheel, and they were of fixed | width. | | I often ended up with 80 open tabs and switching was no issue. It | was such a great feeling being able to close all the tabs after | the work was done. | | With Chrome now I constantly need to drag tabs out in order to | create a new window to start a new collection of tabs, so that I | normally have about 6 browser windows open, then, when looking | for a group of tabs, I first need to find the window. It's the | same with Firefox since they moved away from allowing custom XUL | code. | | Here's an example I just found on Google | https://thasulinux.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/tab_mix_plus.... | IHLayman wrote: | On my iPad this is a problem. On my desktops, I have Firefox with | Tridactyl installed, turning off the tab bar, nav bar, and menu. | Everything is handled via keyboard if I can help it, including | tab navigation: with a single keystroke I can start searching my | open tabs fairly quickly by typing a portion of the tab title, | and at end of day I bookmark tabs I want to read later with one | command, clear all remaining tabs with another. Super easy, and | no need for a learning algorithm to start trying to learn my | surfing habits. | | Not trying to sound snarky, this tool just seems a bit like | overkill. It might be useful on my iPad where it is cumbersome to | do those steps, but it would also be useful to have Tridactyl | there too. | colordrops wrote: | One thing I do is keep a text file with lists of links, e.g. | "programming", "gardening", "health" etc and if I haven't looked | at a tab after a few days, I copy the URL and put it in the | appropriate list, then close the tab. | | If the browser prompted me to "archive" a tab after a few days | and select a category, I'd probably use the functionality. | vxxzy wrote: | Just fire up another window :) | bonecrush wrote: | I have 0 problems with tabs. I used to and man they can be | annoying. | | The system that finally worked for me is to bind "Close all Tabs | to Left" to Ctrl + Left, likewise for right, and Close All Except | Open Tab to Ctrl + Up. | | I found this enables painless instant culls, I just save URLs | everything I want to survive a total cull (it's hardly ever more | than 2 URLs, most tabs are junk which I suppose is the main | problem). | | Ctrl + W for Close Current Tab and Ctrl + Shift + T for Reopen | Closed Tab are also pretty useful (require no bind). | greenmana wrote: | Vivaldi is such a great browser, it has really wonderful and | hands down the best tab management features. | https://vivaldi.com/features/tab-management/ | andyxor wrote: | related: | | TabFS: Mount your Browser Tabs as a Filesystem | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25600338 | aidos wrote: | I feel like there are broadly 2 groups of tech literate users; | those who like lots of tabs and those who keep things lean. I | absolutely cannot relate to the first group, as much as I try to | understand the mentality. | | When I'm digging deep into something new I might end up with 20 | tabs, but a) it's an exception and b) the moment I can see no | more value I just close them all down and reset. | refactor_master wrote: | For me, tabs are very much a manifestation of what's going on | in my mind at that very instant. Basically a cache. But once | I'm done with my task or work is over, I'll close every. | Single. One. | | The fear of not being able to recall information is a classic | busy-syndrome feeling. Sometimes I also have to tell myself | "I'll _probably_ remember what I worked in yesterday, so maybe | there's no need to panic after all". | dkarras wrote: | >But once I'm done with my task or work is over, I'll close | every. Single. One. | | That works for the general case but sometimes I search a | solution to a problem (possibly without even knowing how to | search for it so lots of experimentation) then find a | possible solution after much sleuthing. But then... I'll have | to record this somewhere so that when I encounter this | problem again, I know what to do, where to find help and | won't waste another 30 mins of my life to the same problem. | That record keeping has friction, needs a commitment and I'm | probably busy. And there are probably a couple other valuable | sites I found that would help with the problem's domain in | the near future. So I /may/ need to reference them in the | future. So better record it somewhere, but I don't have a | good "system" so don't know where to put them. Bookmarks are | already a cesspool. I have documents for projects and note | taking but it will need some explaining before I describe the | problem to make the result searchable. Did I say I was busy? | I'll do it later... but now another problem pops up. More | sleuthing, tabs accumulate, same problem, twice the size, | twice more procrastinated debt. | | Yeah, I can close them all. But I /emotionally/ want to avoid | the pain of finding myself in the exact position of a few | hours ago, having that annoying problem without a solution. I | don't want to waste more time on this. I will eventually | forget the solutions I found. I need to keep track of all | this. But don't have the time or motivation. | | Then, path of least resistance is accumulation of tabs - | inaction. | weaksauce wrote: | for a lot of people you search for something to solve a | problem. for instance debugging an issue. you middle click on a | bunch of promising tabs and then go through them. if there is | some useful information on that page you leave it open but it's | rare that it's the only thing you need to know to solve your | problem. another use is some API you need to use so you'd open | up a bunch of tabs on the functions you are exploring how you | need to use them. | | I also separate the issue by window too and also use tabs and | windows as temporary bookmarks really. not worthy of a full | bookmark but not finished with. | | I created an webextension to deal with handling those tabs | because having a bunch of tabs across a bunch of windows is not | the most ergonomic without one. might be useful for someone | here I suppose: https://github.com/fiveNinePlusR/tabist | | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabist/hdjegjggiog... | | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabist/ | jrcii2 wrote: | As someone who often carries a lot of tabs, I often keep the | tabs around because the cost of evaluating whether a tab is | worthwhile or not is high. It usually pulls me out of flow and | pulls me into whatever article is bookmarked, which slows me | way down. | | It'd be nice to have them slowly fade away so I didn't have to | make a decision because most of the time, I don't need the tab | and wouldn't even remember that it's gone lol. | skipants wrote: | Same. I tend to use my tabs as a stack. On the left side I have | the tabs I never close; like my Jira dashboard. Going towards | the right I have my tabs that are todo -> in-progress. As I get | through each thing, I close the tab. This tends to keep it | pretty lean. | jerf wrote: | It would be interesting to see if there's a correlation between | how many tabs you like open and when you started using the web. | I used it for a long time before tabs were even a feature, and | I find it easy to keep my tab count down. Compared to having to | keep things down to "preferably 1, but maybe 3 or 4 if you're | in a real pinch", keeping the tab count under 100 is no big | deal. | | (I'm _abundantly sure_ the correlation isn 't 1, so simply | citing your own experience, alas, won't do much.) | andrewaylett wrote: | Looks like I've 81 tabs open in this Firefox window. It's not | uncommon that I'll be over 1k (across one window per monitor). | | With `%` to search across open tabs, and an unused tab not | really taking any meaningful amount of resources (especially | with Auto Tab Discard) I open a whole load of tabs, close them | if I realise I'm done with them while I'm looking at them, and | if I don't close the tab then that's fine -- it's probably | scrolled off the left of the tab bar where I can't see it and | it'll get cleaned up in due course. | cschep wrote: | Seems like 1k is well beyond the state of usefulness for most | people. Isn't it faster to re-google something than find the | tab? And if there is a nice tab search.. is it better than | google? Why keep a local cache? | Twisol wrote: | > With `%` to search across open tabs | | ... _No way._ That 's my TIL for the day. Am I the only one | who didn't know about this!? | _jal wrote: | I have 14 pinned, those are tools I use at least daily at work. | | Add in a page of search results, 3 or 4 of those opened, HN and | some article I'm reading during "clear my head" time, and I'm | at 20. | | I'm usually working on multiple tasks, many of which take | multiple days. I have tried to group tabs in windows | thematically, but browsers are shit about respecting that (for | instance when opening new tabs from other apps). | | I'd rather read what's in my tabs than mess around with them, | so I tend not to fight it. | aidos wrote: | Do you really need 14 pinned tabs? I use plenty of apps too, | but they don't need to be sitting there _all the time_. | | And multiple day tasks, I still can't imagine why you need | all the tabs. For me, I get in, get what I need and get out | again. | _jal wrote: | Well, "need" is a funny word. I guess I don't "need" any | tabs, or even bookmarks. I could just type URLs all day and | have a very pretty browser. | | They are things like GHE, monitoring, DNS, our CA. Things I | use/change literally every day, some of them I'm in | constantly. I don't pin things I don't use all the time. | | Multiday tasks are typically research-heavy, closing things | is equivalent to "loosing my place". I suppose I could use | "bookmark this group of tabs", but it hasn't really | mattered when I can just... leave them there until I come | back. | stinos wrote: | _I have 14 pinned, those are tools I use at least daily at | work._ | | How do you open these pinned ones? I used to do this as well, | but since browsers got better at fuzzy matching (or whatever | it is called) in the address bar I figured this keyboard-only | approach gets me to commonly visited sites faster. Ctrl-T (or | Alt-D to reuse current tab), yc, Enter -> I end up on this | site. | mmphosis wrote: | I avoid browser tabs if possible. I currently have 5 browser | windows open, and have hacked userChrome.css to hide the tab | bar: #pageActionButton { display: none | !important; } .urlbar-history-dropmarker, .urlbar- | history-dropmarker:hover { display: none !important; | } #TabsToolbar { visibility: collapse; } | | I currently have 12 visible windows open. I prefer a spacial | interface where I can see and change everything vs. a modal | interface of only seeing one task at a time and having to | constantly switch between each task/tab. | DoomHotel wrote: | Yes, same here. "Close Tabs to the Right" gets used a lot. If | there's anything I want to keep I either pin it or drag it all | the way to the left first. | paulpauper wrote: | I had hundreds and I use all of them at least once a week | aidos wrote: | Let's call it 200. You have 5 days in the week. So that's 40 | tabs you need to visit each day. 5 different tabs each hour, | just to get through them. Even! Even if you need to visit all | those different things - you know what they are and you want | to go there, so why not hit cmd-l and autocomplete on the | name from any tab and open it? If I want intercom, I type | 'app.i - enter'. Why would I want it open? | pessimizer wrote: | I just opened HN 20 minutes ago, from there opened 5 tabs | into comment threads, and from each comment thread opened | the linked article in a new tab. This is a new tab I opened | to reply without losing my place in the thread. That's 12 | tabs. | jlokier wrote: | In April 2021 I visited 5036 pages, 167 pages a day | average. | | In the last week it was down to 157 a day. Because I've | spent more time in head-down coding. | | 5 tabs an hour, hah. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | I feel you. April 2021 : 7752 pages visited. | | Generally 300+ tabs in firefox. Mostly in chunks | corresponding to home or work projects that take months | or longer to finish. | witrak wrote: | I keep open 200 and more tabs, especially when I can't | finish a job before I start or continue another one. It's a | matter of efficiency - closing a group of tabs found after | painful and time-consuming research is unreasonable IMO. To | find a specific tab after a day or two I use the tabFX | Firefox extension. It allows searching for the tab | containing keywords in the title/URL or tabs similar to the | selected one. Also allows closing tabs directly from the | search result list. Extremely useful. | eterm wrote: | I'm completely the same, I might have a dozen active tabs but | everything gets closed down asap, and in general I'll have | multiple windows for different contexts each with just a few | tabs. | riccardomc wrote: | I am ruthless with my tabs. I always close them all at the end of | my day. | | Just like Inbox 0, I aim for Tab 0. Serenity is the reward for | this small disciplined effort. | | Close them. They're not going anywhere. You can always find the | links back tomorrow. An entire multi-million industry wants you | to find them back as easily as possible. | | You might even find better ones when you start fresh. | | It's just your loss aversion instincts kicking in[1]. It's how | your brain is wired. But we live in the golden age of information | retrieval. You don't need to hoard tabs. Your brain just doesn't | know. | | Trust me, if you can. Close them. | | It will be ok. | | [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion | dewlinedew2 wrote: | I used to use the Bookmark all Tabs to a folder feature at the | end of each day. It's the equivalent of sweeping it under the | rug, or creating a folder named desktop_new and burying | everything there | dmt0 wrote: | That multi-million industry does a good job at burying the | content that's not fresh any more, and not a very good job at | filtering out SEO manipulators. Good luck googling for that | article from a year ago that had a nuanced comparison of A and | B. | riccardomc wrote: | I also find search engine result signal to noise | deteriorating in favour of SEO-crafted content. | | On the other hand, that article from a year ago is most | probably outdated by now. | NaturalPhallacy wrote: | Same here. | | Right clicking my leftmost tab and hitting "Close tabs to the | right" is so freeing once you get used to it. | | That aside, how do you do the [1] type of linking? Manually? I | checked the docs and in classic hacker style they didn't avail | me. | seryoiupfurds wrote: | Yeah, it's a social construct not a feature. You type [1] in | the paragraph, and then you type | | [1]: https://example.com/ | | at the end of your comment. | [deleted] | eivarv wrote: | I'm currently trying to solve this and more in an application | called Cleave. | | https://cleave.app | | Cleave lets users persist OS state as a "context" - saving and | loading open applications, their windows (and their positions), | tabs, open files/documents and so on. Think of it as a workspace | or project manager from an IDE, but on the OS-level. | | I started working on it because of frequent multitasking of heavy | work with limited resources; Made it because I wanted to switch | between studying, working, reading, looking for an apartment, | etc. without manually managing all states or consuming all | resources. | | I'll release an Open Beta (macOS) as soon as I finish license | verification and delta updates, but I keep getting sidetracked... | SkyMarshal wrote: | I still miss Opera's MDI (Multiple Document Interface). Using | that vs using tabs felt like using a tiled window manager vs | graphical window manager. You could get so much more efficient | with the MDI once you dialed in shortcuts, window switching and | rearranging, etc. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple-document_interface | | https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/old-software/web-browsers/op... | Overdr0ne wrote: | I really want my tabs to just be emacs buffers. | | Emacs has sooo many different tools to organize and operate on | buffers, so different types of users can compose a workflow that | works for them, including plain old tabs if they really want. And | of course, extensibility, the most important feature imo | | And you can do this now of course, with w3m or other plaintext | browsers, but it's just not that comfy for most webpages these | days. And there's emacs-webkit, but it's still a bit of a pita to | install. | | I still use qutebrowser for most things, and with i3/sway plus | the save-session function, i can get hierarchy and persistence, | and that seems sufficient for now... | WesolyKubeczek wrote: | I just declare a tab bankruptcy every once in a while. Close | everything, forget I opened those tabs. If it is important | enough, it's already stashed away in a format that lends itself | to offline reading. If it's not yet stashed, it will bubble up | eventually from among other things. | | If I don't have time to stash it away, whom am I kidding? I'm not | going to come back to it in a near future anyway. I already have | a couple of things that remind me of how guilty I am by not | coming back to them, why add more? | rubyist5eva wrote: | i get anxious when I have more than like 5 tabs open...I don't | know how people handle having 20-100+ | deckard1 wrote: | Based on what they show so far[1], I'm not really convinced tasks | are the solution. The UI they present seems really clunky for | 2021. | | > He means we need something richer, that we should be collecting | information by "task" or another word he brings up again and | again, "context." | | Yes, context makes sense. But it needs to be context over time. | Context that evolves and can be searched and revisited. You | should be able to pull up the context of last month, or the 2nd | week of May of last year. | | > "If you think about it, Google does a good job giving us | thousands of search results," says Kittur. "But that entire | process after search results is being done pretty much entirely | in our heads. | | Precisely. Fixing tabs is not about the browser at all. It's a | problem with search. Search begins and ends at Google. What we | _really_ need is a search that starts global and integrates | _personally_. Think of tabs as a sort of cache of what you have | brought in from the broader internet. This "cache" should have a | simple search interface (think Slack's search, vim Ctrl+P, fzf, | Command+Space/Spotlight, etc.) but also have the ability to pull | up some sort of window that you can navigate context by other | means. Such as date, device, location, etc. "Show me what I was | looking at on my phone when I was at Starbucks last Wednesday" | kind of thing. | | Tabs are the fear of losing context. Make context durable, | transparent, holistic (i.e. you can zoom to either the trees or | the forest), and global (sync across all devices) then you will | have largely solved tabs. | | [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90635776/the-twisted- | psychology-... | [deleted] | throwawayboise wrote: | So weird to me. I think this every time I read about browser | tabs, organization strategies, etc. | | I rarely have more than half a dozen tabs open. And that's if I'm | busy. Normally it's one or two -- whatever it is that I'm | currently working on. | | And at the end of the day -- all closed. History and cache | cleared. Start clean the next day. | barbazoo wrote: | Even the history, eh? That would definitely slow me down next | time I want to go back to that same page. I guess I rely on the | browser suggesting the previously visited website to me. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-05-14 23:00 UTC)