Coming to Chrome: a new way to use tabs • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by pmontra » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:21 AM UTC

Others already wrote about Firefox tab groups and containers. I do use containers but I use a different way to group tabs.

I'm using Ubuntu with Gnome shell customized to look like the old Gnome pre 2014, or was that 2012? I have a virtual desktop per customer and one Firefox window per desktop. One "customer" it's my own pet project of the moment and another one is where I keep my email, WhatsApp web and Telegram desktop and other social media in their own private container tab. So I group per window and I need less functionality from the browser because I rely more on the OS.

I believe that Gnome calls those desktops Activities but I disabled nearly all of the Activities related stuff. I have hotkeys to move to desktops and I use them like old school virtual desktops, a fixed number of them. IMHO yhe less the screen moves the better it is.

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

#22

Post by nieve » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:24 AM UTC

wyldfire wrote: post #2

> tab collectors who have...significantly more Guilty as charged. I have a hard time saying goodbye to some of those tabs sometimes. Tab minimalists react in horror. Meh -- they're missing out. > Now, with a simple right click, you can group your tabs together and label them with a custom name and color. I'm afraid that this might just free enough pixels to allow me to collect yet more tabs. ;)

Don't feel too bad about your tab hoarding, I'm at 3 windows with 4630 tabs and I'm pretty sure I'm closer to a stress test than a user. Chrome can't function with 1/20th of mine and Firefox runs smooth and fast. Restarting with loading all the session data takes seven or eight seconds total. It can't just be the different multi-process models so I'm pretty sure that the Chrome team can do better.

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

#23

Post by akersten » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

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 of them are open. Tree style, 50 tabs are just as easy to navigate as 5. I really wish browsers would build this in as a native feature.

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

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

#24

Post by mcbutterbunz » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

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.

I'm just thinking out loud but I wonder if there was an easier way to visually identify certain tabs that seem related. Right now all I have is the favicon but there are so many favicons that look similar its difficult to tell them apart.

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

#25

Post by benrbray » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:28 AM UTC

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.

Wrong! I have a very sophisticated system for managing my tabs. I'm very breadth-first when browsing the web and I also switch contexts a lot. Tabs are like a big Todo list for me.

For a while, I would get really frustrated when chrome would crash and close all my tabs, but recently I found a ln extension that keeps track of my tab history as a big tree! Yippee!

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

#26

Post by qubex » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:33 AM UTC

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.

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

#27

Post by razster » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:33 AM UTC

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…

That’s a great addon. To be honest this would work great in a piece of software my company creates. Our clients can add there own custom tabs, this would help greatly...

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

#28

Post by quink » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:37 AM UTC

RHSeeger wrote: post #13

I just want the title bar back, above the tabs, on the mac. It's so frustrating trying to move/select the window with a tiny sliver available to click on.

AltDrag · https://stefansundin.github.io/altdrag/

Does both traditional and to resize as known on X11.

Edit: Whoops, Windows only, sorry. But the same problem exists on Windows too, and I'm sure a corresponding solution exists on Mac. On X11, of course, it's built in.

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

#29

Post by matsemann » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:39 AM UTC

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…

Can't remember why, but I ended up using Sidebery instead of Tree Style Tabs. So that's also a nice alternative.

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

#30

Post by kevsim » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:40 AM UTC

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?