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A Study of Tabbed Browsing

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Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#41

Post by JepZ »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #3

Small sample size (21) and only one who preferred windows over tabs. Still, may be worth studying more. I prefer browser tabs after resisting them for about a year. And I still prefer separate terminal windows. So maybe I'm not the best judge.

Well, on the other hand I find the findings very conclusive, but the 'study' is from 2010 and I haven't noticed any major changes in the tab pattern as it ist presented to us as users.

So if there would be a larger study, we should think first about which actions we would take depending on the result as we got already some sound assumptions.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#42

Post by watwut »

mhd wrote: 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…

> 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.

You just changed zero-work instantly available all the time visible todo list into something that requires effort.

> For long-time storage, there's bookmarks.

Bookmarks are for things you are likely to remember later. Tabs are for things one is unlikely to remember later. Things you did not knew exist or cared, but now there is article on dzone you wanna get idea about.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#43

Post by kaoD »

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…

Same here. For everyone that does this, I hereby recommend FireTitle (currently Crappy FireTitle) which lets you label windows with specific names and maintains them labelled across restarts. It immensely helps navigate the myriad of windows that (at least in my case) you end up with.

A must in my workflow.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/crappy-fireti...

I've tried many, many add-ons and this is the only one that is simple and at the same time the most effective at keeping my windows tidy and helping me choose between them at a glance.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#44

Post by gkya »

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…

Combined with tree style tabs this is very useful. Tree style tabs provide organisation nearly without you having to do anything special. But sometimes for a deep dive shopping session or researching something across many sites, I open a new window. I don't keep them around though, I like my Emacs window and my Firefox one be one alt tab apart most of the time. I'm so used to it in fact that when there's a third window I feel partially impaired. Also, when sth is in an other window that I don't frequent (say in a different workspace) I tend to forget about it. I restart my computer and my two pillar apps infrequently, so it's possible that such windows remain unseen for weeks. But tree style tabs combined with vimium-ff allows me to use a single window most of the time, except temporary tasks that will require me to open and close numerous tabs in a short period of time.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#46

Post by gkya »

mhd wrote: 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…

Nothing near this but I do the following:

- Use tree style tabs

- Use vimium ff for the ^ binding, toggles between the two tabs most recently viewed

- Tabs means "read this ASAP"

- Bookmarks toolbar means "read it later"

- Other bookmarks folder is the bookshelf, for later potential reference

- Completions only come from bookmarks

- Bookmark heavily

- Make sure bookmarks have meaningful and findable names

Nowadays the only problem I have is linkrot. I have written a python script that analyses my places.sqlite, and it reports ~%8 linkrot, although some of that is SSL errors and some keyword search bookmarks. I'll try to extend the script so that it tries to change the likns that actually 404 to web archive ones where possible and safe. But other than this finding thing is easy for me these days. Also, DDG helps. It's my default search engine since some years I guess by now, and the ! searches have proven to be a very nice thing to have, albeit I've only scratched the surface with regards to them.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#47

Post by gkya »

Vinnl wrote: post #36
mhd wrote: 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 theoreti…

> the cost of keeping them open is not that high (at least in Firefox, where they simply scroll out of view).

As a way to save some memory, if you haven't disabled history and set Firefox up such that it reloads your session when you quit and reopen, you can just restart it every now and then, and only the focused tab will get eagerly loaded.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#48

Post by paul7986 »

Vinnl wrote: post #38
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?

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.

Tab Mix Plus was an add on that Firefox Quantum no longer supports. :-(

It could be customized to open a new tab when clicking a link, clicking a bookmark, performing a search from the URL bar and more.

Now in Quantum I have to right click then choose open new tab vs. just one normal left click. Frustrating and a UX killer for me. It's why I never stopped using FF, but am going to have to now.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#49

Post by falcolas »

paul7986 wrote: post #48
Vinnl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tab Mix Plus was an add on that Firefox Quantum no longer supports. :-( It could be customized to open a new tab when clicking a link, clicking a bookmark, performing a search from the URL bar and more. Now in Quantum I have to right click then choose open new tab vs. just one normal left click. Frustrating and a UX killer for me. It's why I never stopped using FF, but am going to have to now.

Middle click will do it with fewer key presses, as will ctrl/cmd clicking. Those are the habits I’ve picked up.

Re: A Study of Tabbed Browsing

#50

Post by mhd »

watwut wrote: post #42
mhd wrote: 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…

> 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. You just changed zero-work instantly available all the time visible todo list into something that requires effort. > For long-time storage, there's bookmarks. Bookmarks are for things you are likely to remember later. Tabs are for things one is unlikely to reme…

My memory isn't good enough to make "likely" work out here, so that wouldn't be a good fit for me. Right now it's more about "will I use this soon enough", and of course that changes depending on how much time you've got available anyway. And when that happens, I file them away on pinboard or discard them. It does work, but better integration and UX would improve things.

And you might got that wrong: I don't want to assign priorities to tabs and/or bookmarks, I just regard both as being in different "priority" buckets, and maybe finer-grained distinction and ease of moving things back and forth would be a good approach. (Never mind: "all the time visible"? Not in my tab tree ;) )

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