Live data from Hacker News

On Browser Tabs

abuqader.substack.com

121–130 of 187 posts

Re: On Browser Tabs

#121
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Yes, in principle I could export the list of tabs to a text file, and begin anew ..." I came here to complain that, actually, you can't . Or rather, it's surprisingly complicated to export a simple list of current tab URLs to a plain old text file. You need to dig several directories deep into /Library (or whatever, depending on your OS) and then use JSON tools to export ... I've already lost most people. Why can't…

For Firefox, there is Export Tabs URLs.

No, I don't want an extension for a simple, basic piece of functionality that everyone keeps asking for.

about:tabs would be the easiest thing in the world.

Re: On Browser Tabs

#122

I built the "first tabbed browser", NetCaptor, back in 1997. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/meet-th... My take - some of us leave tabs open way too long because we fear not being able to get back to those sites again… it’s loss aversion. Tabs aren’t the core problem per se, it’s recall. We need to solve the “I want to get back here again” problem. I primarily use Brave and effectively start fres…

Thanks for the memories, and the inspiration!

Based on trends I saw in NetCaptor, I wrote an add-on for my favorite browser at the time, Opera, and happily used it for probably years.

I don't have the code nor the binary anymore, but a screenshot still remains:

Re: On Browser Tabs

#123
post #3

I... have a problem. I recently had ~1600 tabs open in Firefox. With a lot of painstaking effort I cut it down to ~750. Quite some distance to go still. The default interface sucks once you have more than 50 tabs. I wish there were easy REPL-ish programmatic access to the list/dict of tabs (so I could filter out all GitHub tabs, or close all stackoverflow tabs, etc) and that was a first class citizen in the browser i…

If you really are digesting any substantial degree of 1600 tabs it sounds like you need a tool like a personal wiki to file info and something like rss to manage incoming sources of data.

If you just find yourself unable to close stuff you have read once and will never touch again you need to train yourself to use your tools more effectively.

If you strap enough engines to something it qualifies as a jet including a bike but it doesn't make it a reasonable means of transport.

Re: On Browser Tabs

#124
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Firefox, there is Export Tabs URLs.

No, I don't want an extension for a simple, basic piece of functionality that everyone keeps asking for. about:tabs would be the easiest thing in the world.

> about:tabs would be the easiest thing in the world.

Thanka for volunteering! Can you link me to your patch?

Re: On Browser Tabs

#125
I close them often, middle-click on the header or Ctrl+W. I also miss opera's hotkey to close all tabs except the active one.

When I'm doing some research where I need lots of them at the same time, I use OneNote or sometimes Word to keep the links, adding a line or 2 of text about that link.

Re: On Browser Tabs

#126
Latest safari 14 screwed up tabs. Now when you’ve got lots and icons enabled the little text snippet disappears so you’ve got aesthetically looking tab icon. Useless! Must be the worst browser tab experience, especially on iOS.

If there’s one company that can unfuck browsers its ironically Microsoft...

Re: On Browser Tabs

#127
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that point isn't it better to just set up some bookmarks? Navigating 700 tabs is much harder than navigating a hierarchical bookmark list. Personally I only keep open tabs that I am actively working in, if I have more than ~15 I get less productive since I have to hunt through to fine the one I need. Several times a day I just clear out all my tabs aside from a couple pinned ones.

Bookmarks discard window layout, scroll bar position, back/forward history, form contents, etc. They don't stay in sync with tabs so you have to delete and recreate them.

I kinda think there should be no distinction between tab and bookmark. Just give me tools to suspend old tabs into bookmarks.

Re: On Browser Tabs

#128
post #103
post #3

I... have a problem. I recently had ~1600 tabs open in Firefox. With a lot of painstaking effort I cut it down to ~750. Quite some distance to go still. The default interface sucks once you have more than 50 tabs. I wish there were easy REPL-ish programmatic access to the list/dict of tabs (so I could filter out all GitHub tabs, or close all stackoverflow tabs, etc) and that was a first class citizen in the browser i…

I'd say that if you need 1000+ tabs, there is a problem. Not with you but with the browser. I mean, how can you not get lost? Do you realize the thing you are looking for is on tab 248 before lookin it up again? At that point these are not tabs anymore they are a directory or a history. I think using tabs for that is totally inadequate. Unfortunately, browsers tend to be lacking in that department. They have a list o…

> I'd say that if you need 1000+ tabs, there is a problem. Not with you but with the browser.

IIRC people switched from IE to FF because IE had no concept of tabs.

Re: On Browser Tabs

#129

I built the "first tabbed browser", NetCaptor, back in 1997. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/meet-th... My take - some of us leave tabs open way too long because we fear not being able to get back to those sites again… it’s loss aversion. Tabs aren’t the core problem per se, it’s recall. We need to solve the “I want to get back here again” problem. I primarily use Brave and effectively start fres…

I'm working on something that solves this. It's not ready yet, but here's a sneak peak of the landing page: http://closetab.email

Re: On Browser Tabs

#130
Interesting that nobody mentioned not using tabs at all. I adapted the chrome.css of my firefox to hide tabs altogether, so I can get more screen real state. That paired with Vimium allows me to hit T to get a list of all open tabs, which I can then incrementally search. If I want to open a link from history, I hit O instead.
Post reply on HN