Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Overcoming Tab Overload

scs.cmu.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 240 posts

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#121

Post by cschep »

andrewaylett wrote: post #109
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.

Looks like I've 81 tabs open in this Firefox window. It's not uncommon that I'll be over 1k (across one window per monitor). With `%` to search across open tabs, and an unused tab not really taking any meaningful amount of resources (especially with Auto Tab Discard) I open a whole load of tabs, close them if I realise I'm done with them while I'm looking at them, and if I don't close the tab then that's fine -- it's…

Seems like 1k is well beyond the state of usefulness for most people. Isn't it faster to re-google something than find the tab? And if there is a nice tab search.. is it better than google? Why keep a local cache?

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#122

Post by QuadrupleA »

Here's a radical solution - close tabs when you're done with them.

There's a little known feature in browsers called bookmarks that's like tabs, but they don't consume any RAM or bandwidth when you're not using them, and they don't clutter your UI. You can search them, group them into "tab folders", even synchronize them across devices.

Spread the word - bookmarks are the future.

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#123

Post by shard »

QuadrupleA wrote: post #122

Here's a radical solution - close tabs when you're done with them. There's a little known feature in browsers called bookmarks that's like tabs, but they don't consume any RAM or bandwidth when you're not using them, and they don't clutter your UI. You can search them, group them into "tab folders", even synchronize them across devices. Spread the word - bookmarks are the future.

That's the problem, I have nearly 100 tabs open because I am not done with them.

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#124

Post by lowbloodsugar »

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…

Minimize window?

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#125

Post by bityard »

QuadrupleA wrote: post #122

Here's a radical solution - close tabs when you're done with them. There's a little known feature in browsers called bookmarks that's like tabs, but they don't consume any RAM or bandwidth when you're not using them, and they don't clutter your UI. You can search them, group them into "tab folders", even synchronize them across devices. Spread the word - bookmarks are the future.

I _do_ close tabs when I'm done with them.

The problem is that I have multiple things I'm working on and I don't want to close the dozen or two tabs open that I have related to it while I'm still working on the project, because looking up the bookmark, or finding the URL, and then scrolling the right spot is many times more work than just keeping the tab open and switching back to it when I need it.

My favorite Firefox feature of all time was "Tab Candy" which was later renamed to "Panorama" It allowed you to automatically group tabs by project or context and let you switch between them seamlessly. Firefox decided to kill it and there is nothing like it now, all of the closest alternatives--when they actually work--require you to manually save and reload groups, which is not effort I'm willing to make.

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#126

Post by bityard »

andrewaylett wrote: post #112
twobitshifter wrote: post #29

I was actually a big user of firefox panorama. I know that it wasn’t easy to discover but it was the best idea of tabs I’ve seen. Expose, grids, and multiple desktops work the best for switching windows, why not have it for tabs? I think that with the right desktop environment we could completely get rid of most tabs. Windows and ie were terrible with opening new windows which made tabs a necessity, but really they s…

It's still around, as a fork of a fork: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-tab-... I never really got to grips with having different sets of tabs within the same window -- that's the kind of thing I use multiple windows for. But I still have the extension installed because it's the easiest way to show several hundred tabs in a way which means I can avoid loading the content just to close tabs.

There have been so many forks of this, and they have all been buggy or gotten stalled. This one in particular randomly forgets some of your tab groups. ("you had ONE job!")

The closest thing that works for me is https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tiled-tab-gro... but I'm not thrilled with the user experience.

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#127

Post by riccardomc »

I am ruthless with my tabs. I always close them all at the end of my day.

Just like Inbox 0, I aim for Tab 0. Serenity is the reward for this small disciplined effort.

Close them. They're not going anywhere. You can always find the links back tomorrow. An entire multi-million industry wants you to find them back as easily as possible.

You might even find better ones when you start fresh.

It's just your loss aversion instincts kicking in[1]. It's how your brain is wired. But we live in the golden age of information retrieval. You don't need to hoard tabs. Your brain just doesn't know.

Trust me, if you can. Close them.

It will be ok.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#128

Post by Overdr0ne »

I really want my tabs to just be emacs buffers.

Emacs has sooo many different tools to organize and operate on buffers, so different types of users can compose a workflow that works for them, including plain old tabs if they really want. And of course, extensibility, the most important feature imo

And you can do this now of course, with w3m or other plaintext browsers, but it's just not that comfy for most webpages these days. And there's emacs-webkit, but it's still a bit of a pita to install.

I still use qutebrowser for most things, and with i3/sway plus the save-session function, i can get hierarchy and persistence, and that seems sufficient for now...

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#129

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

riccardomc wrote: post #127

I am ruthless with my tabs. I always close them all at the end of my day. Just like Inbox 0, I aim for Tab 0. Serenity is the reward for this small disciplined effort. Close them. They're not going anywhere. You can always find the links back tomorrow. An entire multi-million industry wants you to find them back as easily as possible. You might even find better ones when you start fresh. It's just your loss aversion…

Same here.

Right clicking my leftmost tab and hitting "Close tabs to the right" is so freeing once you get used to it.

That aside, how do you do the [1] type of linking? Manually? I checked the docs and in classic hacker style they didn't avail me.

Post reply on HN