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

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11–20 of 26 posts

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

#11

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

That sounds a lot like KDE Plasma Activities [0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAI2NDJadDM

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

#14
That’s been one of the strategies to help me cope with my ADD: turning my most visited services into standalone apps, and forbid to open links outside the domain in those apps.

I use Fluid in Mac, although IIRC there was a non trivial way to create them using Firefox.

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

#16
post #15

I use multiple browsers for this purpose - trying to keep individual windows straight that are all holding [supposedly] grouped tabs sounds like about 20x the mental overhead

I do the same, as well as using multiple apps in particular editors for different flavours of tasks: RubyMine, VSCode, Sublime Text.

I do still end up with too many Chrome tabs for work items. Using a couple of windows helps and tab groups delay the inevitable but isn't a good solution (other than store only, read never).

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

#18
post #8

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.

I can probably count on two hands the number of times I've ever directly opened my bookmarks in about 26 years of browsing. The reason I still bother to bookmark is that most browsers these days allow you to type into the URL bar a word and it'll suggest bookmark titles containing the word, that works for me. Still think bookmarking needs a paradigm shift in how we manage and organize the data.

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

#19
Even better is to use a single workspace for each task. I keep an IDE window, a few terminals, and a couple browsers for each task I'm working on. Not sure if this works in floating WMs, but in a tiling WM it's a delight. I actually disabled tabs in Firefox and let Sway do tabbing instead. That way I can have a single window tabbed with multiple apps, only some of them a browser.

Before I started working this way, my stress levels were through the roof. I spent so much time alt-tabbing through 100 windows and getting burned out. Organization is key!

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