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A Study of Tabbed Browsing

dubroy.com

31–40 of 54 posts

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#31
post #2

About revisitation: is there a tool that saves the contents of every web page as I browse, and creates a searchable archive? I think there is a much higher probability that webpages I have seen in the past contain relevant information for future searches. It could be used as an offline library, or as an advanced revisitation mechanism.

Yes!

If you're on Linux or Windows, you can use the amazing Recoll: http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/usermanual/usermanual.h...

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#32
"Out of sight, out of mind".

If I close a tab, the chances of me re-visiting it drop to 0.

If I keep it open there is still hope.

Sad but true, even though I'm from the era of web rings and bookmark folders.

That's why I loved it when I noticed that Firefox didn't load all the tabs when you restored your session. So you can have tabs dormant.

Funny side effect of dormant tabs and the modern fast moving internet is that I sometimes find myself re-visiting tab after it has gone 404.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#33
post #2

About revisitation: is there a tool that saves the contents of every web page as I browse, and creates a searchable archive? I think there is a much higher probability that webpages I have seen in the past contain relevant information for future searches. It could be used as an offline library, or as an advanced revisitation mechanism.

That's something I'm exploring doing (web as a filesystem, plus document archive). There are some tools, though I've largely not found them useful.

I've just learnt of Recoll (sibling comment) on this thread, looking at that.

But yes, this is very much something I'd like. I'm using Pocket somewhat for this now, but with a tremendous amount of frustration.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#34

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…

Thanks for this really great idea. I am also the one with 100s of tabs open in same window :-( From now on, one window, one topic :-)

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#35

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 have tried to train myself to do this a lot of times. However, most of the links I open come from other applications, except for HN or googling I rarely open links from webpages. This always results in links opening in random windows.

My final solution is to use two browsers and pinned tabs. I use Safari for slacking off and googling. And chrome for work related stuff with pinned tabs for Jira, Jenkins and what not. I then use Browser Fairy to redirect links from various applications to one or the other browser (e.g. everything from iTerm gets opened in safari, stuff from slack gets a prompt, non associated apps open links in Chrome)

I still accumulate crud in my Chrome tabs, but at least it is livable.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#36
post #11

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 windo…

One of the prime benefits of using tabs as TODO's that I experience is that it is literally _zero_ effort to retain something on your TODO list, and practically zero effort to remove something from it. This means I don't have to worry about losing things I still wanted to keep track of, yet the amount of things I retain that I no longer care about is limited. Yes, there's still quite a lot of tabs that could theoretically be closed, but the cost of keeping them open is not that high (at least in Firefox, where they simply scroll out of view).

So I'm not sure how much of a problem it is. There is a history function in the browser, but it's cluttered with things I don't care about that makes the things I do care about hard to find. If you look at that as a problem, then tabs could actually be seen as a solution to that.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#37

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)

> penalise you for downgrading by deleting random bookmarks and your browsing history

aka they don't support profile data migration between versions. "Penalise" is needlessly polarising.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#38

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?

You mean you did not have to click links, bookmarks or search to open a new tab before, and if so, what did you use?

Or do you mean that you can't now - because you're supposed to still be able to. Although you might have to get used to using the middle mouse button rather than the left one.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#39
post #2

About revisitation: is there a tool that saves the contents of every web page as I browse, and creates a searchable archive? I think there is a much higher probability that webpages I have seen in the past contain relevant information for future searches. It could be used as an offline library, or as an advanced revisitation mechanism.

Yes! If you're on Linux or Windows, you can use the amazing Recoll: http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/usermanual/usermanual.h...

Ah, that looks promising, though it seems like the web extension uses a download hack to communicate with the backend, requiring you to let firefox download such files by default. They really should use the native messaging api, that would also make it possible to search from within the browser, which is kinda important for a good experience I think.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#40
post #21
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Firefox also does not reload all tabs on start, unlike Chrome That's a choosable setting in Chrome -- resume where you left off, or start fresh.

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