I've been looking for platform-independent bookmark keeper and like to selfhost things, so I've set up a wallabag instance [1] hosted behind my TLD. There's an Android app via F-Droid as well.
Can recommend this a lot. Using it to either save websites (wallabag downloads all HTML content) or catch up on longer articles during train rides etc.
I closed a lot of browser tabs
111–120 of 263 posts
Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs
#112Tabs, bookmarks and browser history are productivity nightmare; there is just no good way to organize all of it and search through it. Navigation is pain.
Imo the greatest problem of the modern internet is search; there is so much information and in particular unstructured information and no internet search engine even comes close to efficiently searching through all that trove of information.
Personal analytics and better internet search solutions should be the next big focus of web development in order to increase productivity. Metadata and semantic web dream should never be forsaken.
Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs
#113Interesting solution for tracking open tabs.
Every so often I like to dump all my open tabs into pocket just to make absolutely sure I will never see them again.
Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
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're likely thinking of "We Still Don't Get Things Done", posted 11 days ago:
https://www.wired.com/story/to-do-apps-failed-productivity-t...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28010716
And yes, there's a lot there that resonated strongly with me.
The cars-under-tarps anecdote is an excellent one. As life goes on, one accumulates an ever-growing list of gates which have closed irrevocably behind one. The German word Torschlusspanik is a brilliant invocation of this. The English equivalent is roughly "mid-life crisis", though the German captures far more of the essence and slowly-building grief.
https://blogs.transparent.com/german/torschlusspanik/
There's saying (memory says Chinese though I'm unsure and can't locate it): a wise man is prepared to part with his possessions several times in his lifetime. That might extend to dreams and expectations as well as physical cargo.
Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs
#115Max 8 tabs per window. If you need more, open another browser window.
If you 'lose' a tab you can always find it the way you found it in the first place. You should remember how you found things instead of remembering which tab they were in - this way you can reproduce the process and "find" the content on any other device.
Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs
#116I use Firefox and I have too many tabs open. Tab Stash helped a lot though, great extension. Firefox container Tabs puts a color border on tabs and also helps with work stuff.
Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs
#117Bookmarks are notes. The problem is there is no proper contexting anymore.
Everything is mixed up. Personal, work, development, everything scattered around in applications, files.
A good solution is to have multiple machines with something like synergy.
I'd still love a multi-user environment (multi-context actually), with separate file systems, application instances etc.
Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs
#118Lots of discussion of tabs and bookmarks and how to solve them once and for all with a new ontological hierarchy or server or service.. I get that, we’re nerds, that’s what we do.
But if, like me, your tab clutter is more a problem of psychology: not being ready to close things because you might need them later (even though you won’t), plus a distinct lack of interest in spending hours trying to perfectly curate a museum of links, here’s a trick I picked up years ago that has continued to work reasonably well for me.
I have a bookmark folder named after the current year and month (e.g. “2021-08 Bookmarks”). I keep it in my favorites/bookmarks bar. As I realize my tabs are starting to build up again, I fairly ruthlessly dump them all into the current month’s folder (it’s a pretty quick process of Cmd-D, Enter, Cmd-W). I don’t spend time trying to name them, organize them, or think about whether they deserve pride of place. I just put them there and close the tab, knowing I haven’t thrown any information away, and should I choose to get back to it, I at least have it somewhere. This is all my brain needs to let go of the need to have the tab open. This isn’t a chore I need to do every day (that would make me stop doing it), it’s an escape hatch I can use when I start to feel like my browser is a mess.
When I notice it’s a new month, I put the old one into an “Archives” folder and make a new one. Practically this doesn’t do much, but it does keep it from feeling like one giant trash pile.
While I’m doing this, I’ll usually make a smaller collection or two for things that I do actively need at the moment. E.g. if I’m working on a project and have opened a dozen tabs to research how to do part of it, or components I might want to buy, I’ll put them into a sub-folder of my top-level “Projects” or “Shopping” folders. These are the only other things that live in the favorites bar.
The main motivation for this is, again, to allow me to feel ok closing the tab. It might seem today that the information I looked up about hot-wire anemometers is super valuable because I’m thinking about measuring the delta-P in my air conditioning ducts to figure out if I can buy higher MERV filters without compromising evaporator performance. And then next week when I’m no longer as interested in doing that, I still invested that time in finding those articles and Amazon links and might get back to it.. the reality is that if I still care to do this in a year I could easily look it up again, but it doesn’t feel that way. So save it in Projects > Air Filters and get back to Tab Zero.
Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs
#119The new Chrome tab group is not great, but it does help. One group for things that are being processed (handle asap), one group for "stuff to check", one for each project I'm working on and one for entertainment. All with short names and their own color, so it takes up a minimum of space. The remaining space is for temporary tabs. Larger temporary side quests get their own window and will be either closed or moved in…
» It's still not as good as Firefox's nested Tree Style Tab once was (and might be again?) but I'm kind of locked into Chrome at this point. What terrible being is locking people into Chrome?
Google
Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs
#120My solution is simple: When I feel like I have a lot of tabs [0], I close all of them. What happens when I close a tab I wanted open? I use browser history.
Browser history is one of those things that I feel most people don’t use enough. It’s easy to search, it contains everything you visited, and (for the macOS/iOS ecosystem at least) is synced across devices. A quick cmd-Y and search makes for a very efficient user experience for me.
[0] A “lot” is typically 10-20. I close all of my tabs probably 5-10 times during a typical work day.