Surprised to see no mention of Tab Center (https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center) in the comments. I've gotten so used to it that now I find it hard to use a browser with tabs on top. Being able to see more of the page title when tabs are displayed horizontally is extremely useful. There's a search field too. This combined with the "browser.ctrlTab.previews" set to true in about:config (enables MRU tab switching with ctrl-tab) makes managing tabs awesome for me.
The New Firefox and Ridiculous Numbers of Tabs
181–190 of 563 posts
Re: The New Firefox and Ridiculous Numbers of Tabs
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Edge's reading list shows newer entries at the top. The problem is you don't have to do anything extra to use tabs. You just... leave them open, and then there's no reason to use bookmarks or reading list or history
Yea, but that reduces the value of tabs overall. You can't just glance at the top of the browser to remember where you just were. If i don't look at a tab for a few hours, it's not worth keeping around as it just adds to the noise without providing value. If i need to read something, i either read it immediately or bookmark it to read later. The result: i can confidently resume work without distractions at any time.
> You can't just glance at the top of the
> browser to remember where you just were.
With tree-style tabs, each root represents a train of thought. I just collapse them until I decide what to do with them. Sometimes I bookmark and banish them. Sometimes I come back to that thought next weekend.
Chrome's default tabs at the top, to me, are the distraction where each tab has equal weight. But I'm not going to say that anyone is doing it wrong if that's what they prefer.
Re: The New Firefox and Ridiculous Numbers of Tabs
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
I start doing that, but have made an effort to always start a week with a fresh browser, one tab open. If I haven't read the article before the week was up, clearly it wasn't important enough.
In principle I agree, but in practice... I can't let go of my hoarding ways. What if there's a nugget of information hiding in all those tabs that could ︎ change my life?
Do you folks happen to have Kindles? I use instapaper to save articles as I come across them and then have it all wrapped up and sent to my Kindle once a week. My own customized magazine to read throughout the week as I see fit on an easy on the eyes e-ink format.
Re: The New Firefox and Ridiculous Numbers of Tabs
#184There are a lot of people who use tabs as bookmarks. Seems like a good way to keep the RAM industry going strong. Someone once told me (seriously) "I need at least 128 GB of RAM otherwise I can't keep my tabs open." But does everything you were interested in over the last X weeks or months really need to be loaded up? No, and if you use it like that then it can't preload stuff. I think the main lesson is that bookmar…
Couldn't agree more. Bookmarks are so poorly implemented, people use tabs instead. Which is dumb
Doesn't a lazy-loaded tab solve this problem?
To me, the problem is that bookmarks are "while browsing, go to a different component that loads the browser tab with what I want".
Tabs, OTOH, are a placeholder for things that I want to keep just 1 step closer.
Saying it that way, I don't think it makes rational sense. But 1 cognitive step to a page instead of two is huge for me.
Re: The New Firefox and Ridiculous Numbers of Tabs
#185I'm really glad that people at Mozilla use ridiculous numbers of tabs too. Lazy-loading of tabs is the reason I switched to firefox. I'm not sure if it's still this way, but Chrome used to load every tab on startup. So even if you only had 100 tabs, you were looking at 5+ minute startup time. God-forbid that any of them were Youtube, or you'd have to go through and pause them all. I've just updated to Firefox 55 to t…
So even if you only had 100 tabs This is fucking surreal. Why on Earth would anyone want 100 open tabs, besides testing? What's the real life scenario we're looking at here?
Some people effectively use tabs as bookmarks.
Or, if you want to look at it the other way, bookmarks are just tabs that don't load until you click on them.
Re: The New Firefox and Ridiculous Numbers of Tabs
#186There are a lot of people who use tabs as bookmarks. Seems like a good way to keep the RAM industry going strong. Someone once told me (seriously) "I need at least 128 GB of RAM otherwise I can't keep my tabs open." But does everything you were interested in over the last X weeks or months really need to be loaded up? No, and if you use it like that then it can't preload stuff. I think the main lesson is that bookmar…
It doesn't help that the bookmarks toolbar is not shown by default. I prefer to keep my tabs down to a reasonable number, and put folders on the bookmarks toolbar instead. If I want to bookmark something, I can just drag that link to the appropriate folder.
Re: The New Firefox and Ridiculous Numbers of Tabs
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not sure what you're talking about. They changed their add-on API and are in the process of deprecating the older one which allowed for radical UI changes. That's probably what he was talking about.
Will their own test pilot addon stop working then?
Nope, it just that older extensions will and IIRC the developer of the tree-style-tabs extension was really vocal about the fact that he disliked the new API. He had claimed it would be impossible to port his extension to the new system. I'm not clear on the history of it all, so I don't know if it was possible at the time or not.
Re: The New Firefox and Ridiculous Numbers of Tabs
#188Wow. I've been getting more and more frustrated with how poorly Chrome handles even a moderately large number of tabs (~150), and it sounds like my savior is going to be ... Firefox. Huh. Wouldn't have guessed it, but I'll totally take it. I have a nice extension for Chrome called Quick Tabs that gives me a searchable list of my open tabs and makes it easy to find things I have open... anyone know which of the severa…
Firefox's “Awesome Bar” will suggest open tabs and let you switch to them like any other site.
Yep! No need for extensions, you can see it working here: https://youtu.be/pKE0Oc3yIBs?t=53
Re: The New Firefox and Ridiculous Numbers of Tabs
#189I'm really glad that people at Mozilla use ridiculous numbers of tabs too. Lazy-loading of tabs is the reason I switched to firefox. I'm not sure if it's still this way, but Chrome used to load every tab on startup. So even if you only had 100 tabs, you were looking at 5+ minute startup time. God-forbid that any of them were Youtube, or you'd have to go through and pause them all. I've just updated to Firefox 55 to t…
So even if you only had 100 tabs This is fucking surreal. Why on Earth would anyone want 100 open tabs, besides testing? What's the real life scenario we're looking at here?
I just checked and I currently have 450+ tabs open. I closed around 100 the other day. I work on a number of projects at the same time, so I'll often have a bunch of documentation open for one project and then switch to the next one without closing everything.
I also research a project and then wait a while before starting it. This helps me get a better perspective on the project. I'll often leave my research open in a tab group so that when I start the project I can very quickly review everything and get up to speed. Using bookmarks in this scenario doesn't really work because bookmarks don't save session state very well.
Re: The New Firefox and Ridiculous Numbers of Tabs
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just tabs as bookmarks. I can build up a stack of 100 tabs in a day easily.
How??? I've never understood how people can have that many tabs open and it be useful at all. At that point the information overload is too much. I have at most 10 open, and close them as I'm done with them. Helps reduce cognitive load.
I open a tab as an (internal) signifier that "this might be interesting". I will browse it, and cull the ones that dont fit my interest/mood/timescope.
For me, it reduces cognitive load. I don't keep in mind all tabs that I have open -- that's why I keep them open! To forget about them.
Bookmarks are mentally for things I want to save and reuse. But I'll probably open 40 HN sourced articles (from the main page and comments) per day, and continually cycle/review them for interest/effort throughout the day.