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Coming to Chrome: a new way to use tabs

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Re: Coming to Chrome: a new way to use tabs

#112

Post by hawski »

jmchuster wrote: post #70
russellbeattie wrote: post #58

Tab minimalist here... It won't help the others . They just don't pay attention to tabs. It's like a mental blind spot for them... Maybe an outright disorder. They just keep opening new tabs every chance they get. I once sat over someone's shoulder and watched them continue to click the same link in a message over and over again to look at a JIRA while we were debugging something. Every time, it just opened up a new…

You'll create an infinite number of tabs if you have the following rules: - if you will open multiple links from a page, keep that tab, and then open each link in a new tab - each tab is a train of thought -- don't overwrite a tab's train of thought, always open a new tab to keep your trains of thought distinct - only close a tab once you know that train of thought is fully complete - don't interrupt your current tra…

That's exactly how it is with me. Also it is often more convenient to open a new tab and search again for something then to find it in one of already opened tabs.

It would be perfect if beside Google search results the browser would show tab results (with full FTS) and history results. I would prefer to have it there instead of search bar's completion.

Then if tabs would really be just history of opened tabs the browser could do some LRU GC.

Re: Coming to Chrome: a new way to use tabs

#113

Post by TeMPOraL »

akersten wrote: post #23

Neat, and works well for the toy example with 4 tabs open. I don't really think it would work as well for the "tab collectors" as they think. They seem to be aware of this too, since none of the screenshots in the post have anywhere near what I would consider a significant amount of tabs open. I use the tree style tab extension on Firefox[0], which I cannot live without. Horizontal tabs become useless after about 15…

Agreed.

Honestly, I don't think any of the available interfaces are ergonomic enough for a serious tab collector like me. But there's another application in which I also collect hundreds - sometimes thousands - of open pages: Emacs. And there are solutions there that help you manage the load just fine.

Here's the UI I'd love to have for my tabs:

1) All tabs are hidden by default.

2) A keyboard shortcut (or a UI button) brings up a list of tabs (tree-style, not flat) that I can do an incremental, fuzzy search on by immediately starting to type. The default selected tab is the one next to the current one, in the order of opening.

3) Another keyboard shortcut brings a keyboard-driven tab management interface, that looks like this (with apologies to mobile users):

   MRL Name                        Age      Domain                   Category    Full URL
   --- ----                        ---      ------                   --------    ----------
       Coming to Chrome: a new...  30m      news.ycombinator.com     HN          https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23175207
       ↳ Emacs: introduction to... 15m      youtube.com              Video       https://youtube.com/watch?v=6KN_oSLFf-k
       Messenger                    2d      messenger.com            IM          https://messenger.com/t/zuck
       static mesh editor bounds    1d      google.com               Search      https://google.com/search?
       ↳ [HELP] Could someone...    1d      reddit.com               Reddit      https://reddit.com/r/unrealengine/comments/
         ↳ QJX2FGt.png              1d      i.imgur.com              Image       https://i.imgur.com/QJX2FGt.png
In that interface, I want to be able to sort and filter by any of the visible column, mark them directly or by a pattern-match on any of the columns, and then issue commands like: unload marked tabs, delete marked tabs, reparent tabs under a different one, show all marked in a new browser window (or transfer to an existing one), bookmark selected tabs, add/remove tabs from "permanent session", download marked tab(s), etc.

Or, in Emacs terms, 2) is the equivalent of "switching buffers" with any of the (many) incremental search completion plugins, and 3) is the equivalent of ibuffer (see https://youtube.com/watch?v=6KN_oSLFf-k).

I'm tempted to start working on an extension like this.

Re: Coming to Chrome: a new way to use tabs

#114

Post by sergeykish »

kevsim wrote: post #30
qubex wrote: post #26

What I find hilarious about tabs is that it’s basically a full reimplementation of a multitasking interface within a MDI (Multiple Document In Window) context: we came up with windows for different applications and for different documents within that application, and then for the browser we went back and revised the conventional wisdom.

I guess nothing stops us from running one tab per window but I have to say I'm not keen to go back to that. What we be the advantage there over tabs in your opinion?

Window manager can

* group windows in virtual desktop

* search by title

* put side by side

* display fullscreen

* manage shortcuts

Some window managers can't. Browser work around with tabs. It's fine for most of the users, it's missing opportunity for some. At least I was not able to disable tabs completely.

Re: Coming to Chrome: a new way to use tabs

#115

Post by dzhiurgis »

akersten wrote: post #23

Neat, and works well for the toy example with 4 tabs open. I don't really think it would work as well for the "tab collectors" as they think. They seem to be aware of this too, since none of the screenshots in the post have anywhere near what I would consider a significant amount of tabs open. I use the tree style tab extension on Firefox[0], which I cannot live without. Horizontal tabs become useless after about 15…

Given how Microsoft turned itself around perhaps Edge team can implement something like tree tabs.

Re: Coming to Chrome: a new way to use tabs

#116

Post by TeMPOraL »

statictype wrote: post #54
gkoberger wrote: post #19

Maybe I'm wrong (EDIT: seems I'm wrong!), but I feel like the people with dozens of tabs open (guilty) aren't the ones who use organizational features? Also, it's a hidden feature, but you can already Shift+Select a group of tabs, and close/move/etc the whole group.

Dozens? Nothing to feel guilty about. I have closer to 40. I know people who end up with hundreds.

In Chrome, I always stop one tab before all favicons disappear (at this point tabs lose almost all their utility). In Firefox, where tabs scroll instead of being squeezed, I end up having ~100 tabs open before I decide it's time to kill some of them, as it takes too much time to scroll the tab list around.

Re: Coming to Chrome: a new way to use tabs

#118

Post by baby »

gkoberger wrote: post #19

Maybe I'm wrong (EDIT: seems I'm wrong!), but I feel like the people with dozens of tabs open (guilty) aren't the ones who use organizational features? Also, it's a hidden feature, but you can already Shift+Select a group of tabs, and close/move/etc the whole group.

No you’re right. That’s why these don’t work. You need the default way to work. Try tree style tabs that’s pretty much what it does.

Re: Coming to Chrome: a new way to use tabs

#119

Post by baby »

elfchief wrote: post #66

I'm pretty certain that I'm not going to be using any new tab organization feature, if it requires me take explicit action to get the benefit. If I was reasonably capable of organizing my browsing, I wouldn't currently have 468 tabs open to start with...

Check tree style tabs.
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