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

221–230 of 263 posts

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#221

Post by agent327 »

e3bc54b2 wrote: post #91
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,…

> but leaves you with a lot of tabs open that are cognitively hard to deal with ("why did I think this would be interesting?") Get "Tree Style Tabs". All the tabs are in hierarchy. Anything opened via "Open in new tab" becomes a child tab. This way, the "train of thought" is always preserved.

Yes, but then you end up with fifty tabs open, meaning you'll doomscroll for the rest of the day. I very much prefer to see it the way I described it, with the main page on the left and the content on the right. My screen is plenty wide enough to make that possible.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#222

Post by agent327 »

adamkl wrote: post #136
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,…

I do this my having two windows open side-by-side (a 32” 4K monitor and a tiling window manager make this easy) and just drag a link from the left browser window over to the right. Not as nice as simply clicking, but usable. If you’re willing to change browsers if necessary, Firefox has a Side View [0] extension that offers some functionality, though it’s just an “experiment” that hasn’t been updated in years. [0] ht…

I checked out sideview, but if you click a link in the sideview pane it just changes the page in the side view. I want it to change the webpage in the right-hand part of the window.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#223

Post by agent327 »

tigerlily wrote: post #72
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.

Exactly! Thank you, stranger, for understanding what I'm saying :-)

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#224

Post by Maxburn »

platz wrote: post #188
Maxburn wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YES!! I was a long time user of Xmarks for online bookmark syncing (cross platform and browser). I was sorely hurt when it was discontinued. I moved over to EverHelper. These days I don't try to sync bookmarks to browsers, they inevitably get corrupted or lost somewhere shomehow. I just use the EverHelper website as my bookmark manager. I'd love to find a open source thing I can host myself to fully own my bookmarks…

I made a self-hosted pinboard clone that stores your bookmarks in sqlite w/ import from FF https://github.com/jonschoning/espial

Very nice, will look closer to this.

Unfortunately for me I've grown so used to the folder/tree style adapting to tags would be pretty difficult.

Thanks for mentioning it.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#225

Post by elsurudo »

theshrike79 wrote: post #57

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…

I do the same thing, especially the "not reading later" part. but it's a kind of hack that works for me.

By posting this, you just prompted me to do my routine of "evaluate, add, close".

Problem is some of the short-term ones that I "really want to read" – well, I'm not closing those. So it's a partial solution.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#226

Post by [deleted] »

dredmorbius wrote: post #114
raffraffraff wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

[deleted]

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#227

Post by PoignardAzur »

1MachineElf wrote: post #138
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…

I believe it is in Google's and Microsoft's interest to keep bookmarks crippled. Every time you forgo using your bookmarks to lookup something, you instead use their search services, which indirectly translates to money in their pocket.

So the reasoning is there's a Google corporate stooge sending secret emails to Mozilla, telling them "if you ever make a bookmark system better than ours, we'll pull all our Google funding"?

I'm going to stick with Hanlon's razor and assume making a better bookmark system is non-trivial.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#228

Post by Jeff_Brown »

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…

I use a graph database for URLs. Either Semantic Synchrony or org-roam. That lets me keep any URL in as many categories as I'd like, and neat them however I want, or even create cycles if need be.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#229

Post by eyelidlessness »

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…

My too many tabs problem is more than a bookmarking issue.

- It’s partly ADHD: I lose track of tabs I no longer care about

- It’s partly about state: I have actively performed some unsaved work that wouldn’t be preserved by a bookmark

- It’s partly because I use the same computer for work and personal use: this amplifies both of the other problems, and I haven’t found a good profile management solution to mitigate them

I mean by all means an improved bookmark solution could help, and could potentially help to improve these other issues.

But my current solution is to just treat all tabs as ephemeral, and just close them all periodically. I very seldom bookmark anything, I generally use browsing history for that use case instead

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#230

Post by Aerroon »

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…

1. Bookmarks don't save state.

2. Bookmarks aren't a constant reminder in my field of vision that they exist.

3. It turns the "too many tabs problem" into "too many bookmarks".

Once in a while I "unload" my tabs by bookmarking them into a separate folder. I close the tabs and because there's no visual reminder anymore I forget they exist. Eventually I build to to another few hundred tabs and do it again.

Now I'm dealing with a couple of thousand bookmarks. I once deleted my old bookmarks. A couple of years later I went looking for a specific one. I knew exactly where the bookmark should've been, but I had deleted it.

Edit: all of this is to say that I'm not sure whether this has a technological problem. Maybe if the UX of bookmarks was really good.

Post reply on HN