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Experimental web browser optimized for rabbit-holing

szymonkaliski.com

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Re: Experimental web browser optimized for rabbit-holing

#111
post #16

Looks like the stuff of dreams and nightmares for a ADHD user. Am I the only one who regularly ends up a browsing session with 300 tabs? This feels like a feature I'd overuse, and which would only make my life much worse.

I recently discovered the working memory component of ADHD and it became somewhat of a transformative moment for me. It helped me realize that clearing my plate was the most important activity I could do on any given day, because it created the space I needed to focus, and reduced the strain I felt in a day. It has taken time but I've now found when I look at tabs (or screenshots or whatever clutter) and think not ab…

Agreed, but even more so, to the extent that I try to do this "plate-clearing" early and often, in between tasks over the course of a single day, and somewhat obsessively close both browser tabs and desktop windows.

This doesn't mean that more comprehensive browser (and more general desktop) session management tools couldn't be useful!

As it stands, for long-running tasks that necessarily need to be interrupted, I tend to use task-specific VMs, which is wasteful in cases where no background processing is involved.

For example, it'd be useful to extend browsers' (and certain other applications, including macOS applications by UI convention) save/restore state on application quit/restart features to allow multiple state instances to be saved/restored (while still allowing usefully global state to be shared, unlike, e.g., Firefox profiles).

Now imagine the same thing, but across applications and integrated with the desktop environment as, e.g., named, persistent virtual desktop sets.

Re: Experimental web browser optimized for rabbit-holing

#112
This is a little like I a features I wish macOS spaces or Vision Pro screen arrangements provided.

To be able to group, name, save, browse and retrieve multi-space/screen contexts.

I would end up with some projects I open and close frequently. And a growing list of started projects, which would be much more likely to continue for being so easy to resume.

Not being able to put away and resume contexts (of any kind) is a significant cognitive and productivity impediment.

A separate do-undo chain or tree for context edits, in addition to content, would be nice too. I.e. see a context history of what windows I closed, to quickly reopen something.

Seeing a lot of this in a browser is inspiring.

Re: Experimental web browser optimized for rabbit-holing

#114

I made something like this over 20 years ago. It also had full text searching of the contents of the page and also worked as a browser history. I used it for a few years. The real solution I saw in a roomful of butcher paper tucked in cabinets in the basement of a really dedicated guy who had a learning disability. He went through textbooks and had to come up with his own special syntax in order to comprehend the tex…

That sounds like Zettelkasten + Transclusion.

Re: Experimental web browser optimized for rabbit-holing

#115
post #16

Looks like the stuff of dreams and nightmares for a ADHD user. Am I the only one who regularly ends up a browsing session with 300 tabs? This feels like a feature I'd overuse, and which would only make my life much worse.

adhd, end up in a lot of rabit holes. Had 1500 tabs once. (It's possible to have these many tabs open)

4000+ here, I don't even bother pruning them anymore, I just switch browser profiles. I've got about 4 4000+ profiles.

Excessive? Yep.

Re: Experimental web browser optimized for rabbit-holing

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently discovered the working memory component of ADHD and it became somewhat of a transformative moment for me. It helped me realize that clearing my plate was the most important activity I could do on any given day, because it created the space I needed to focus, and reduced the strain I felt in a day. It has taken time but I've now found when I look at tabs (or screenshots or whatever clutter) and think not ab…

Agreed, but even more so, to the extent that I try to do this "plate-clearing" early and often, in between tasks over the course of a single day, and somewhat obsessively close both browser tabs and desktop windows. This doesn't mean that more comprehensive browser (and more general desktop) session management tools couldn't be useful! As it stands, for long-running tasks that necessarily need to be interrupted, I te…

I've been dreaming of this exact idea for a decade. Task specific workspaces.

Re: Experimental web browser optimized for rabbit-holing

#117
post #16

Looks like the stuff of dreams and nightmares for a ADHD user. Am I the only one who regularly ends up a browsing session with 300 tabs? This feels like a feature I'd overuse, and which would only make my life much worse.

adhd, end up in a lot of rabit holes. Had 1500 tabs once. (It's possible to have these many tabs open)

I worked on Firefox to make sure that it kept working (and in particular starting up and closing) when you reached several thousand tabs :)

Might not have been a good idea in the end :)

Re: Experimental web browser optimized for rabbit-holing

#118
post #22

Slightly unrelated: > As an aside, I also use this technique for navigating code with Vim, where a single shortcut goes to a definition of a function in a new pane I was intrigued by this, and searched the author's github for their .vim. This is how they do that: nnoremap gF vgF https://github.com/szymonkaliski/dotfiles/blob/357fc7c76ca86... and nnoremap gD :call CocActionAsync('jumpDefinition', 'vsplit') https://git…

this is great, added this to my nvim config. But changed it to 'gv' as 'gds' added a little bit of lag when I wanted to use 'gd'.

Good one. In general a tricky thing to be aware of with vim: when I add a new variant that uses more characters, the ones with less characters will get a delay.

I presume one can tweak that delay even. But personally, I'll make all the shortcuts "symmetric", eventually. Indeed "gs" or "gv". In other cases, It'd become "gds", "gdd" or such. But "eventually", I try to change stuff more permanently once I see how I actually use it over a few days or weeks.

Re: Experimental web browser optimized for rabbit-holing

#120

The parallel browsing has strong resemblance to Xanadu from Ted Nelson's, which was a proposed web protocol and browser. But I am vague about Xanadu's browser as I only seen it as a brief flash in Werner Herzog's Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World.

the last person i expected to be mentioned in this thread is Werner Herzog
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