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

I closed a lot of browser tabs

rjbs.manxome.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 263 posts

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#51

Post by _Microft »

cookiengineer wrote: post #48
_Microft wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox allows to search your bookmarks by prepending * (an asterisk) to the input of the adress bar. They have also added a button for that a while ago. It's next to the search engine buttons at the bottom of the results panel. These buttons also show the shortcut symbols in their hover-text.

The search functionality is still very limited, though. I don't remember URLs with /some/post/id/123.html. I remember headlines, I remember mentions of the thing the article is telling about. Local bookmarks need an offline cache that at least contains the text content and headings of the URL. Otherwise, the search will stay useless because nobody can organize them manually without making (human) mistakes after a whi…

I agree that the feature is limited and could be greatly improved. Tab titles and tags are usually good enough though to find what I am looking for.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#52

Post by m_t »

OJFord wrote: post #27
sfg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tree Style Tabs in Firefox. Vertical with nesting.

Another option is Sidebery, seemed to be the only maintained one when I last looked. It also supports 'panels' - 'tabs' to the sidebar that switch between sets of tabs. You can assign a panel to a FF container.

This looks like a good replacement of the old tab group Firefox used to have. The fact we can assign them a container is really promising, I'll give it a go!

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#53

Post by mFixman »

I normally have 2–3 browser windows open with at most 5 tabs each. I find that the window → tab hierarchy works very well with my workflow and it allows me to close tabs aggressively when I don't need them without being complex like TreeStyleTabs.

For example, if I'm looking for reference on a particular function I open a new window, open tabs for a couple of relevant results, do some research, and when I'm done I just close the window with all the tabs in it.

I just don't understand people who have a million tabs open in a single window. You clearly don't remember what's on each tab, so it's just screen and mental real estate being used for nothing.

For a Mac, I found that Hyperswitch works really great for letting Command+tab choose the correct window instead of doing the unexplainable mess of OSX application and window switching.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#54

Post by Angostura »

mFixman wrote: post #53

I normally have 2–3 browser windows open with at most 5 tabs each. I find that the window → tab hierarchy works very well with my workflow and it allows me to close tabs aggressively when I don't need them without being complex like TreeStyleTabs. For example, if I'm looking for reference on a particular function I open a new window, open tabs for a couple of relevant results, do some research, and when I'm done I ju…

I’m glad I’m not the only person who works like this. I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me.

I use Safari on MacOS as my daily driver and find the search history functionality really handy

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#55

Post by timvisee »

What do you use to visualize these tabs? Just the tab bar?

I also like to open a lot of tabs, but sometimes find it hard to manage them. I use Tree Style Tab, in a sidebar, wich collapsible groups. I like that a lot but am always wondering what others use.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#57

Post by theshrike79 »

This is a type of FOMO. You start collecting Absolutely Essential Reading in tabs, stuff that you'll for sure read later, no joke, seriously.

You never will.

But you can't close the tab or you can't find the content again and bookmarking is mostly useless if you use multiple computers and browsers daily.

I got over my tab-itis with Pinboard[0]. If stuff seems to sit in my tabs for too long, I can send the link easily to Pinboard, slap on a few tags if it's an unique one or grab a few of the suggested ones if it's a common bookmark.

With the Archiving feature it'll even mirror the content for me so it doesn't get lost in the tides of time.

I'll never look at most of the stuff I pin, but my mind is at ease because the precious stuff is stored =)

[0] https://pinboard.in/

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#58

Post by pjmlp »

cookiengineer wrote: post #16

Isn't this tab fatigue of every user not more a hint that bookmarking is broken? I mean, no matter how I bookmark a website, omnibar is absolutely useless in every browser when it comes to re-discovering your bookmarks via keywords that you remember. Sometimes I bookmark the same URL multiple times, because the Browser is too stupid to realize that a #generated-hashbang or a ?utm_source is a generated tracking parame…

No, I see it as refusal to learn how to use bookmarks.

I fail to see how what is so hard regarding organizing information in folders per subject, when in doubt choose the more generic one.

Firefox also allows me to easily search for bookmarks, and has a quite nice bookmark manager.

Using bookmarks since 1995 across different kinds of browsers, always migrating them along.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#59

Post by somehnacct3757 »

lol768 wrote: post #31

Interesting choice to use some sort of proprietary OS scripting language instead of just writing a standard WebExtension, I thought. Presumably chrome.tabs.query would have returned all tabs and a native manifest would've allowed comms with the outside world to build a HTTP server. Still, I suppose the approach taken by the author worked at the end of the day - just not very portable.

Yeah I think the web extension approach is the best one. Shame they ruled it out. Extension background scripts can push data wherever you want. You can sideload the extension and talk to localhost ports or anyone on the internet. Use ajax or native events to talk to a local process. There's even an event system that tells you when tabs are opened, closed, activated, deactivated, etc.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#60

Post by shakow »

cookiengineer wrote: post #16

Isn't this tab fatigue of every user not more a hint that bookmarking is broken? I mean, no matter how I bookmark a website, omnibar is absolutely useless in every browser when it comes to re-discovering your bookmarks via keywords that you remember. Sometimes I bookmark the same URL multiple times, because the Browser is too stupid to realize that a #generated-hashbang or a ?utm_source is a generated tracking parame…

> Isn't this tab fatigue of every user not more a hint that bookmarking is broken?

In some ways, I agree. My own solution was to develop reading lists storage (https://github.com/domovikapp/domovik-server/), i.e. an intermediate storage space between “saved for the years to come” of the bookmarks and the “in my face” pinned tabs. They are then displayed on my new tab page, so I can remember to read them whenever I open a new page.

Post reply on HN