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Overcoming Tab Overload

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Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#91

Post by jtolmar »

crazygringo wrote: post #85
jlokier wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 month…

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…

> 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.

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#92

Post by dkarras »

refactor_master wrote: post #28
aidos wrote: post #15

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.

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”.

>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.

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#93

Post by catchmeifyoucan »

alsetmusic wrote: post #83

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/

After some digging, I found some more information here:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90635776/the-twisted-psychology-...

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#94

Post by swiley »

crazygringo wrote: post #82

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…

> 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.

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#95

Post by IHLayman »

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.

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#96

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

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?

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#97

Post by catchmeifyoucan »

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 :)

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#98

Post by kirubakaran »

crazygringo wrote: post #82

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…

I'm working on this for https://histre.com/features/save-restore-tabs/

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#99

Post by kirubakaran »

lightfooted wrote: post #27
jzoch wrote: post #18

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…

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.

https://histre.com/ does tree-style web history visualization. This is a personal knowledge graph app I'm working on.
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