I would like to see Chrome utilize what I think is the right solution for loading background tabs; I would like it to let you (when you want to) rather than OPEN a background tab, only ENQUEUE a background tab -- opening it only when that tab becomes active, meanwhile keeping it in the status of an "enqueued" (i.e. barebones) tab with that URL in the tabs menu until you actually make it active or it becomes active the way any other tab would, at which point it loads - in other words a lighter kind of background tab that does not load at all until it becomes active.[1]
If this were implemented then finally I could open 120 tabs in a window for a detailed query (and they're not all loaded, there's zero overhead), then after 11 minutes of reading a few of those tabs, closing the ones I've read and having others load in their place if they weren't already loaded, be left with 87 unopened tabs with which I could close, since I've learned everything there is to know about that subject and I don't feel the need to read the rest anymore: I feel I've found the answer.
As it stands I can become an expert in any subject accessible in a day or two, in twenty minutes - unless, as sometimes happens, Chrome gets in my way. I can do it by opening them in background tabs today - but Chrome will both slow down and also be at high risk of crashing completely, not just in the window I'm in but all windows. Because at the moment even the 99th background tab, which I want to open so as to potentially glance at, actively, fully loads even if I close that window before I ever want to glance at it.
Along the same lines, I strongly feel there needs to be a way (not necessarily the default way) to open private (incognito) windows in a way that opens them privately "Except for crashes" -- meaning that these tabs remain open until I close it, by clicking the X button, not whenever Chrome crashes - which usually happens when it's done using all my memory.
If you fundamentally disagree that there is a distinction between the user actively exiting and you crashing unexpectedly, then you might as well change the Incognito greeting text to "Pages you view in incognito tabs won’t stick around in your browser’s history, cookie store, or search history after you’ve closed all of your incognito tabs or Chrome crashes unexpectedly".
But that doesn't make much sense. So please make the functionality match what was promised to the user, and keep pages open until the user has closed closed all incognito tabs. Not you.
I feel that these changes would improve people's experiences drastically. Chrome's developers surely care about their users and want to give them the best possible experience, and in addition this would get Google more clicks, more traffic, more ads from Google search results, by letting people open more pages with abandon on a lark, or on some thread they want to explore. By letting people keep more pages and searches open or queued for opening.
For the second point (about keeping incognito tabs on disk until they are actively closed with an X, at which point deleting them) - this also gives their users what they've just been promised. Whereas, at the moment in Incognito stuff just disappears whenever Chrome decides to crash -- which is often, given that at the moment it aggressively eats memory for any tab anyone might want to follow. This substantially increases the cost of exploring the web by opening background tabs. It makes people really weigh whether they want to open a background tab: it adds friction.
The web is about links. I hope Chrome will start letting people follow more of them and not lose their trail if they don't want to keep it in their history. This would be a positive change for all users, but, especially, the heaviest and most thorough users of the web, who load and visit the most pages. Now they could open even more in a browsing session, without having to think about whether they really want to risk opening another tab. (In terms of resources.)
For all of these reasons, I hope Google will implement enqueued tabs. Separately, at the user's option, I hope tabs status will be kept on disk until the last incognito tab is closed manually by the user (at which point it's scrubbed with random data), so that upon a crash it can be re-opened unless the user presses an X to that window. It would improve the experience of using the web for anyone who wanted it and not deprive users of the reading they worked hard to assemble for themselves. And it would increase the velocity with which users could explore the web.
Thank you.
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[1] Functionality. Right-click a link, click "enqueue", this should be the same as "open in background tab" except the tab is really kind of like a placeholder, just consisting of a URL. It's not a full background tab that opens, gets its window name, etc - instead, it is not loaded until you actually make the tab active.
Right-clicking the tab bar should give you the option (in addition to normal options) "Close all enqueued tabs", leaving just tabs you've fully normally opened.
Example usage: say I'm searching for an article. I can start by doing some obvious Google searches in a few different tabs. I can go through the results and enqueue each one. Then I can go through the first (when it becomes the active tab, it is loaded) and enqueue any links that might lead to what I want. Then I close the now full-fledged tab when I'm done reading and following links, the next tab becomes active (which might have been an enqueued tab in which case it becomes loaded for the first time) and I can keep doing my search. Eventually I've found the page I'm looking for and can close all of the enqueued pages, or perhaps drag the tab into a new window (as you can today) and then close the old window - disappearing all the enqueued pages but also the normal, fully loaded tabs, per the normal behavior closing a window. (An enqueued tab is just a semi-loaded tab, just a URL that never loads until the tab becomes active. If its window or itself is closed in the way you usually close a tab - by right-clicking and clicking "close tab" or by middle-clicking on it, before it was ever the selected tab, then it simply wouldn't have even loaded a single time.)
This is exactly what I do today: except I have to be careful that Chrome doesn't crash while I do it, because it doesn't do it gracefully. I would like to manually specify whether I want the background tab to be actually loaded.