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A Study of Tabbed Browsing

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Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#11

Post by mhd »

One problem with tabs vs windows is that it just looks at two "solutions" and isn't approaching things from a use case perspective. Not that this is easy, with people having wildly different browsing habits.

Thanks to the magic of the middle mouse button, I always was a heavy tab user, opening "sub-tabs" in the background for plenty of link-heavy sites (like HNews). In the early days I created lots of top-level windows and used Expose for switching between them. After discovering TreeStyleTabs, I became a one-window guy again.

So it seems I'm in the tab camp. But there's still the question why I need to have that many tabs open in the first place? It's not like I'm heavily multi-tasking. There's a good reason for opening those three zeit.de news articles in separate tabs, but why do I need to retain the tab group with 13 react-redux links or 27 interesting CPAN modules?

We've got a problem with browsing history. For long-time storage, there's bookmarks. I'm using pinboard for this for unified access and tagging. But if I file something there, it might be that I forget it, so I keep a tab(-group) open.

Heavy tab users seem to be closer to using them as TODO items than mere window management. So it might be a good idea to look at TODO/GTD/Calendar apps for improving the stats quo. Not just filing vs. on-screen, but different levels of priorities. Maybe a bit of "AI", where Clippy reminds you that you've got a tab-group stored that contains this exact Stack Overflow article about handling NULLs in Oracle. And from there, you have quick access to the browser history "surrounding" those pages, even if it was a year ago. A "mega-expose/Jurassic Park file explorer" view of saved tabs/bookmarks, where you can drill down by tags, text etc.

The tech wouldn't be the big problem, probably doable with browser extensions. But getting a good initial design for this is the difficult part.

And then you find out that some Hypertext paper from the mid-70s already had all that.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#12

Post by Stratoscope »

This seems to be all about tabs or windows.

Am I the only one who uses tabs and windows?

I have one browser window always open with all my everyday communications: Gmail, Google Voice, Calendar, a corporate Outlook webmail account, a Discord team, etc.

Then if I do something different I open a new window for it. If it's an HN break, I open a new window for the HN home page and start middle-clicking (or Ctrl/Cmd clicking) each of the discussion and site links that look interesting. Now I have a window loaded up with those tabs that I can either look at or come back to later.

Time to do a Google search on a particular topic? New window for the search, then middle-click the most promising results. Now I have a window grouping the research on that topic.

So I end up with a number of windows for different activities or topics. Each of those windows has several tabs that relate to that specific interest.

I have one friend who opens everything in a single window with dozens of tabs and no organization to them. I tried to demonstrate this system of a window per topic with fewer tabs in each window, but it just didn't register.

It seems so easy though: New topic? Ctrl+N for a new window about that topic. Then open tabs within that window just for that topic.

And when I'm done with a topic, I can close all the tabs related to that topic in one fell swoop.

I admit this is a very naive question, but it seems like such a practical and obvious approach - so why doesn't everyone do this?

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#13

Post by iamtew »

Stratoscope wrote: post #12

This seems to be all about tabs or windows. Am I the only one who uses tabs and windows? I have one browser window always open with all my everyday communications: Gmail, Google Voice, Calendar, a corporate Outlook webmail account, a Discord team, etc. Then if I do something different I open a new window for it. If it's an HN break, I open a new window for the HN home page and start middle-clicking (or Ctrl/Cmd click…

I feel exactly the same, and I've rarely met people who do the same!

Specific task has its own window, with all related tabs in there. Another window, another task/context.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#14

Post by hawski »

Stratoscope wrote: post #12

This seems to be all about tabs or windows. Am I the only one who uses tabs and windows? I have one browser window always open with all my everyday communications: Gmail, Google Voice, Calendar, a corporate Outlook webmail account, a Discord team, etc. Then if I do something different I open a new window for it. If it's an HN break, I open a new window for the HN home page and start middle-clicking (or Ctrl/Cmd click…

I do the same on Chrome, but on Firefox there were Tab Groups. For the time being it needs to be ported to Web Extension. Firefox also does not reload all tabs on start, unlike Chrome. That's a thing that I don't like the most about Chrome.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-groups/

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#15

Post by paul7986 »

Hating Firefox now as there isn’t a Tab Mix Plus for Quantum.

I need to click any link, bookmark or search to open a new tab! This how I’ve browsed the net for ten or more years.

Anyone else frustrated about this and found a solution?

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#16

Post by dima55 »

FRex wrote: post #9
dima55 wrote: post #4

Speaking of which, does anybody know how to turn off tabs in firefox, and make it instead open a new window when it would like to open a new tab? My WM already has tabs.

In about:config set browser.tabs.opentabfor.middleclick to true and instead of Ctrl + Click use Shift + Click on links to open them in new windows instead of tabs. Also uncheck "Open new windows in a new tab instead" in Options in GUI or set browser.link.open_newwindow to 2 instead of 3 (it's the same thing) to make pop ups open in new windows instead of tabs. There might be an extension to remap the Ctrl/Shift short…

Thanks. I think I already did most of those. But the tab bar is still there, taking up space. And apparently I can't remap keys without an extension, or something.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#19

Post by lexicality »

paul7986 wrote: post #15

Hating Firefox now as there isn’t a Tab Mix Plus for Quantum. I need to click any link, bookmark or search to open a new tab! This how I’ve browsed the net for ten or more years. Anyone else frustrated about this and found a solution?

Lots of people are frustrated with their tab extensions dying and I assume most of them (like me) are now using the ESR release. (Note that Mozilla penalise you for downgrading by deleting random bookmarks and your browsing history)

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#20

Post by moredhel »

dima55 wrote: post #16
FRex wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In about:config set browser.tabs.opentabfor.middleclick to true and instead of Ctrl + Click use Shift + Click on links to open them in new windows instead of tabs. Also uncheck "Open new windows in a new tab instead" in Options in GUI or set browser.link.open_newwindow to 2 instead of 3 (it's the same thing) to make pop ups open in new windows instead of tabs. There might be an extension to remap the Ctrl/Shift short…

Thanks. I think I already did most of those. But the tab bar is still there, taking up space. And apparently I can't remap keys without an extension, or something.

I use tree style tabs, and wanted to get rid of the redundant tabs at the top. I used the following:

https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/issues/1525

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