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I closed a lot of browser tabs

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Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#71

Post by raffraffraff »

dredmorbius wrote: post #38
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…

Very much this. I've attempted (largely unsuccessfully) to try to use Pocket (also a Mozilla product) to address this. The problem with Pocket is that it gets worse the more you use it. From four years ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_... A couple of those issues have been addressed. There's now "find in page" on the Android app, and editing tags is very slightly improved. But overall,…

It's weird. The exact same problem affects to-do apps and note taking apps. I'm pretty sure it was a HN post I recently read where the problem of to-do apps was discussed. People go through phases: discover an app, start with a clean slate, get a better night's sleep because you get to write down all the things you're definitely going to do, work your way through x% of the list, gradually accumulate a list of things you shamefully failed to do, and eventually getting thoroughly depressed with the app and stop using it (or nuke the list every few months). Browser tabs are just another to-do list. So are those kitchen drawers, garden shed workbenches with half finished projects on them, tech books you insist that you'll read, and Udemy courses you bought in a sale and never used. These things all remind me of the 90 year old man who lives half a mile from my house, who has two beautiful old cars in his garage. One is an Austen A30, the other a '65 Jaguar S-Type. Both sit quietly rusting under disintegrated tarps. I'm sure he must have had dreams of fully renovating them when he bought them 30 years ago, but he knows that when he dies they'll end up as scrap, or maybe as some other retired gentleman's project that'll never get completed, and whenever he sees them, I'm sure it eats away at him, like the rust eats his cars.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#72

Post by tigerlily »

agent327 wrote: post #64

Here's something I'd love to have. Let's you are reading hacker news. Clicking a link gives you two options: open in a new tab, or open, replacing the current tab. Opening in a new tab works, but leaves you with a lot of tabs open that are cognitively hard to deal with ("why did I think this would be interesting?"). Replacing the current tab removes the context. When you return to the front page, it may have changed,…

So like a left and right pane? That would be extremely useful, especially for search engine results, you could click on results in the left pane and quickly view them in succession in the right side pane.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#73

Post by ttctciyf »

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 don't remember URLs with /some/post/id/123.html. I remember headlines

When I open a new window[1] in Firefox and start typing in the address bar, I get matches based on the page title not just on the url.

For example, I open a new window and type "brow" and the matches I get include "I closed a lot of browser tabs | Hacker News" (see image[2].)

So I rarely if ever use bookmarks, I can almost always find what I'm looking for by typing in the url bar, or if that fails by searching in history.

1: Are you seated? Good. I don't use tabs, I just open new windows with ctrl-n and use alt-tab & ctrl-w to navigate. I have middle-click set to open in a new window. I use customise to put the "open new window" icon onto my buttons, next to the address bar. I would happily use a version of firefox with no tabs, they add nothing to my life.

2: https://i.imgur.com/loFZ0Mm.jpeg

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#74

Post by skinkestek »

edoceo wrote: post #63
dredmorbius wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incentives misallignment is a major component of my disillusionment. It's possible that a non-Google vendor might see the approach as a differentiator. Of these, Mozilla seems to be footgunning itself with exceptional facility, Apple would serve only its own hardware platforms in all likelihood, and the remaining players (KDE / Webkit) are so small as to be utterly outclassed. The remaining possibility would be a gen…

Let's work on Servo! It's not completely dead. Super users building a browser for super-users. Does anyone know how to build a modular plugin sub-system?

> Let's work on Servo! It's not completely dead. Super users building a browser for super-users.

Please do!

I already sent some money in that direction and will be happy to send more.

I will also be happy to test it (commit to 1-2 hours or maybe more pr week of actual following-a-plan testing not just "using it and see if it works" for a few weeks) but I am afraid I can't learn enough Rust to be helpful at the moment (small kids and a full time job).

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#75

Post by Macha »

pjmlp wrote: post #58
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.

1. Bookmarks fail for medium term usage. There's some research material for a doc or PR I'm actively working on - Why bookmark, catalogue and eventually prune if I'm not going to need it past tomorrow?

2. Bookmarks don't keep page state. As more apps go the PWA route, not all of them have URIs that lead to your preferred state. Even just stuff like expanding/hide comment threads is a start, not to mention things like NPR which redirect me to the homepage if it's been too long since I last did the CMP dance.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#76

Post by mackrevinack »

tab stash for firefox is the best solution I've found so far. i still end up with tab creep every now and again, but when it happens it's really quick to stash them into different groups, give it an optional name of needed, then when you open the that group of the later on, the stash is deleted.

the other thing i love about it is that is just uses plain bookmarks and folders for each stash, so i means that you can sync your bookmarks to mobile and still access them there. a few other extensions ive tried in the past store they bookmarks in a database, so you can only access on another device if you use the same extension

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#77

Post by unicornporn »

sfg wrote: post #11
bellyfullofbac wrote: post #6

Vivaldi allows placing the tab bar vertically[1], I've used this since Opera times (an Opera founder departed the company after its Chinese takeover, and started Vivaldi), I currently have around 120 tabs open in 5 windows (actually you can also scroll on the tab bar itself), yeah too damn many. I suppose people without AppleScript can write a browser extension that iterates through all the tabs and report the count…

Tree Style Tabs in Firefox. Vertical with nesting.

This. The Vivaldi implementation sucks because: not a tree.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#78

Post by eivarv »

justinc8687 wrote: post #65
eivarv wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently trying to solve this and more in an application called Cleave. https://cleave.app Cleave lets users persist OS state as a "context" - saving and loading open applications, their windows (and their positions), tabs, open files/documents and so on. Think of it as a workspace or project manager from an IDE, but on the OS-level. I started working on it because of frequent multitasking of heavy work with lim…

How does this compare to virtual desktops? Isn't this their main use?

Compared to virtual desktops, this allows you to close down apps (consume less resources) as well as maintain multiple working context-specific application states.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#79

Post by brongondwana »

I am very much the opposite! I close my entire browser at least once per day - every tab closed. I have about 10 sites in my bookmarks toolbar - which are basically the key sites I use for work, and that's it.

If I have too many tabs open, I lose context.

Ditto with terminals - they ALL get shut down multiple times per day. Reset to zero, spin up state, do task, reset back to zero.

I treat it like a commercial kitchen - you clean the whole place and then you cook the session's meals, and then you clean it all down again.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#80

Post by lifthrasiir »

thefr0g wrote: post #70

I don't get why people litter their browser with tabs. I pretty sure I never used more than 30 at the same time. I just close them if I don't need them anymore. At the latest when I can't read the titles anymore the garbage collection runs. If I might still need it I just bookmark the page. (It helps to sort your bookmarks and have proper syncing)

Because I'll be never sure when I need this tab next time. I can't use bookmarks because bookmarks don't record the exact context (the history leading to that tab and neighbor tabs).
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