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Tell HN: Use separate windows, not tabs, for distinct tasks

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Tell HN: Use separate windows, not tabs, for distinct tasks

#1

Post by wrftaylor »

I find this reduces cognitive switching penalty.

Each window has all the tabs relating to a specific task.

When you finish a task, you can close the whole window at once.

When you want to pause a task, you can minimise the window.

Your minimised windows show you of your tasks in progress without you having to infer it be checking all of your tabs.

Building the habit is hard, so what I did was install a browser extension that limits the number of tabs you have running, and set the limit to three. This will force you to start using new windows for different tasks. It can be annoying in the long term, but it's enough to break the "new-tab-by-default" habit.

Re: Tell HN: Use separate windows, not tabs, for distinct tasks

#2

Post by zmp0989 »

If you use Chrome I recommend the tab group feature. I group all of my relevant tabs into a group and close out the entire group when I'm done with that task/project (or sometimes never, but at least things are organized).

But I wholeheartedly agree with OPs idea in concept.

Re: Tell HN: Use separate windows, not tabs, for distinct tasks

#4

Post by navjack27 »

If I could do that with everything I would.

Windows needs window containers in which house windowed "desktops" that house programs.

I want to put a project on pause I can just close the container and pick up with everything in it later instead of trying to document and remember where and what I was using and opening everything the same way every time

Re: Tell HN: Use separate windows, not tabs, for distinct tasks

#5

Post by jasfi »

navjack27 wrote: post #4

If I could do that with everything I would. Windows needs window containers in which house windowed "desktops" that house programs. I want to put a project on pause I can just close the container and pick up with everything in it later instead of trying to document and remember where and what I was using and opening everything the same way every time

Virtual desktops sounds like what you want. Just press Win+Tab.

Re: Tell HN: Use separate windows, not tabs, for distinct tasks

#6

Post by Jtsummers »

navjack27 wrote: post #4

If I could do that with everything I would. Windows needs window containers in which house windowed "desktops" that house programs. I want to put a project on pause I can just close the container and pick up with everything in it later instead of trying to document and remember where and what I was using and opening everything the same way every time

Windows supports virtual desktops which is how I generally group different applications and documents that are open simultaneously. Use Windows+Tab to bring up the set of current desktops and create a new one. Windows+Control+left/right will let you move one at a time through them (though it doesn't cycle, leftmost and rightmost don't bring you back to the next).

Or you can use VMs like some projects do in my office. Closed and status saved, totally restored to the last working condition when reopened. It's convenient, though not my personal preference (also cleanly handles issues around projects requiring different versions of some system libraries and tooling).

Re: Tell HN: Use separate windows, not tabs, for distinct tasks

#7

Post by bmitc »

navjack27 wrote: post #4

If I could do that with everything I would. Windows needs window containers in which house windowed "desktops" that house programs. I want to put a project on pause I can just close the container and pick up with everything in it later instead of trying to document and remember where and what I was using and opening everything the same way every time

Do you mean Windows as in the OS? (Not sure since it's the first word in your sentence.) Because Windows has a multiple desktops feature which allows you to group open applications for various purposes. To my knowledge, it does not have a sort of container-like restart capability, but you could just leave everything in the desktop open.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/multiple-desktop...

Your feature request of suspend and resume is actually a pretty neat idea. Both Windows and macOS have features to re-open windows after restart, so I assume they could do the same for both of their multiple desktops feature.

Re: Tell HN: Use separate windows, not tabs, for distinct tasks

#8

Post by jasfi »

There's still the annoyance of wanting to hang on to some tabs, but not others. Bookmarking extensions are typically the answer, but there seems to be a problem with out-of-sight, out-of-mind. So once you've bookmarked a tab and closed it, the chance of going back to it isn't good.

Re: Tell HN: Use separate windows, not tabs, for distinct tasks

#9

Post by skribanto »

zmp0989 wrote: post #2

If you use Chrome I recommend the tab group feature. I group all of my relevant tabs into a group and close out the entire group when I'm done with that task/project (or sometimes never, but at least things are organized). But I wholeheartedly agree with OPs idea in concept.

I do something similar with TreeStyleTabs/Sidebery in firefox
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