Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I closed a lot of browser tabs

rjbs.manxome.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 263 posts

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#21

Post by psyc »

milesvp wrote: post #4
zeristor wrote: post #2

Is that a lot? I think I've got Firefox up to 3500, indeed I mentioned this when I went to a meetup hosted by Mozilla, and they said that few people use more than 14. I think some of the tab tools start to make it unstable, but the root issue is that it'd be good to clear down browser tabs often.

I just don’t understand how anyone could have less than 14 tabs open at any time. Just using a search engine requires at least 4 at a time, and I’ve often got four or five searches going at any time. And then there’s at least a half dozen communication tabs. Even when I declare browser bankruptcy and close whole windows dedicated to some topic, I don’t think I can get my total count below 14. I mean, I get that my wo…

I have 18 open right now, and that's a lot for me. That's where I start looking for something to close. None are search tabs, and usually I don't have any. Looking at them now, 9 are only open due to some definite hoarder mentality. Things I wish I would do, that I'm not going to do. For example, 2 are colleges that I was hoping I might apply to 6 months ago, that I know I'm never going to. But oh no, if I close the tabs it's like the decision is final. Well fuck this noise, I'm closing them all now. Done.

Everyone else is saying bookmarks are their solution to exploding tabs, but I've never used bookmarks. I have six on the bar that are just shortcuts to frequently visited sites. I dunno, I guess I just never find pages that are so unique that I can't google them if I need them later. I'm certainly never going to go back to anything that I didn't have an immediate need for the first time. I might intend to, but I know better.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#22

Post by hawski »

On Firefox for a lots of tabs management solution I recommend Simple Tab Groups [0]. It is how built-in tab groups should have always worked instead of the manual panorama. It does periodical backups, that I have never needed to use and it even integrates with tab containers.

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-gr...

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#24

Post by DrSiemer »

The new Chrome tab group is not great, but it does help. One group for things that are being processed (handle asap), one group for "stuff to check", one for each project I'm working on and one for entertainment. All with short names and their own color, so it takes up a minimum of space.

The remaining space is for temporary tabs. Larger temporary side quests get their own window and will be either closed or moved into a new group before closing the browser.

It's still not as good as Firefox's nested Tree Style Tab once was (and might be again?) but I'm kind of locked into Chrome at this point.

Bookmarks only work for tools and resources I need on a regular basis, and even then it's usually easier to just google them when they are needed. Who has the time to actually study all those bookmarks saved for later?

Maybe some kind of organizational bookmark extension, that would help you go through it all, could help with this.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#25

Post by amelius »

What I want is a History functionality that allows me to better search through visited pages. Firefox does this, but they only show the page title, which is often not sufficiently descriptive. They should show search results like DDG/Google shows them.

With a better search, I wouldn't feel the need to keep so many tabs open.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#26

Post by bodge5000 »

cookiengineer wrote: post #16

Isn't this tab fatigue of every user not more a hint that bookmarking is broken? I mean, no matter how I bookmark a website, omnibar is absolutely useless in every browser when it comes to re-discovering your bookmarks via keywords that you remember. Sometimes I bookmark the same URL multiple times, because the Browser is too stupid to realize that a #generated-hashbang or a ?utm_source is a generated tracking parame…

The solution for me is to use the great suspender (pre kerfuffle version) which makes tabs act kind of like temporary bookmarks, but you're right in that something better is needed.

I guess the problem is that a lot of people, myself included, use tabs as a kind of todo list of things to look at (whether thats effective or not is another point), whereas bookmarks hide themselves out of sight and out of mind

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#27

Post by OJFord »

sfg wrote: post #11
bellyfullofbac wrote: post #6

Vivaldi allows placing the tab bar vertically[1], I've used this since Opera times (an Opera founder departed the company after its Chinese takeover, and started Vivaldi), I currently have around 120 tabs open in 5 windows (actually you can also scroll on the tab bar itself), yeah too damn many. I suppose people without AppleScript can write a browser extension that iterates through all the tabs and report the count…

Tree Style Tabs in Firefox. Vertical with nesting.

Another option is Sidebery, seemed to be the only maintained one when I last looked. It also supports 'panels' - 'tabs' to the sidebar that switch between sets of tabs. You can assign a panel to a FF container.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#28

Post by bashwizard »

zeristor wrote: post #2

Is that a lot? I think I've got Firefox up to 3500, indeed I mentioned this when I went to a meetup hosted by Mozilla, and they said that few people use more than 14. I think some of the tab tools start to make it unstable, but the root issue is that it'd be good to clear down browser tabs often.

I don't think I've ever had more than 10 tabs. Why on earth would anyone have more than a few open at the same time?

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#29

Post by detaro »

cookiengineer wrote: post #16

Isn't this tab fatigue of every user not more a hint that bookmarking is broken? I mean, no matter how I bookmark a website, omnibar is absolutely useless in every browser when it comes to re-discovering your bookmarks via keywords that you remember. Sometimes I bookmark the same URL multiple times, because the Browser is too stupid to realize that a #generated-hashbang or a ?utm_source is a generated tracking parame…

Yes, a good bookmarking/archiving/... solution would likely solve this for many people.

Re: I closed a lot of browser tabs

#30

Post by OJFord »

pjmlp wrote: post #9

Maybe this a generation thing, I never have more than 10 open, on average. Anything worth keeping, bookmarks.

Not sure which way around you're suggesting, but at my first job out of university I had a colleague at the other end of his career; we each (without either influencing the other) had hundreds of tabs open at a time. I don't think it's generational.

I have four Sidebery 'panels' assigned to FF containers; I try to keep each down to ~30, but one or more of them will frequently go well over 100 when I'm in the middle of looking into something, spanning months.

For example, a few weeks ago I hacked together a WiFi-serial adapter for my Prusa Mini, so that I coule use it with Octoprint et al. remotely. I thought I'd like to write it up into a blog post, on the blog I haven't got around to setting up, so until I do - or until I admit I won't - all the tabs from me stumbling through forum threads, the printer firmware, reminding myself how to do embedded anything, ... are all still open as both a reminder to write it, and an aid when/if I do.

Post reply on HN