Overcoming Tab Overload • Hacker News Board

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#41

Post by paulpauper » Fri, May 14, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

>Internet browser tabs are a major source of friction on the internet. People love them. People hate them. For some users, tabs bring order and efficiency to their web browsing. For others, they spiral out of control, shrinking at the top of the screen as their numbers expand.

how about multiple layer tabs

I am a big fan of hoarding tabs. Bookmaking a page can sometimes result in the page being different when reloading or not working. Tabs stay permanent in memory can be referred to later in an unchanged state. It is like the digital equivalent of a library. I can always defer to an open tab when i need something.

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#42

Post by ksec » Fri, May 14, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

alfl wrote: post #7

I've opened this in a tab and intend to read it later.

Same here, it is acting like a reading list. Mostly because Bookmark sucks.

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#43

Post by paulpauper » Fri, May 14, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

aidos wrote: post #15

I feel like there are broadly 2 groups of tech literate users; those who like lots of tabs and those who keep things lean. I absolutely cannot relate to the first group, as much as I try to understand the mentality. When I’m digging deep into something new I might end up with 20 tabs, but a) it’s an exception and b) the moment I can see no more value I just close them all down and reset.

I had hundreds and I use all of them at least once a week

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#44

Post by rubyist5eva » Fri, May 14, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #41

>Internet browser tabs are a major source of friction on the internet. People love them. People hate them. For some users, tabs bring order and efficiency to their web browsing. For others, they spiral out of control, shrinking at the top of the screen as their numbers expand. how about multiple layer tabs I am a big fan of hoarding tabs. Bookmaking a page can sometimes result in the page being different when reloadi…

Vivaldi has this, it's actually quite useful.

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#45

Post by stinos » Fri, May 14, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

_jal wrote: post #35

aidos wrote: post #15

I feel like there are broadly 2 groups of tech literate users; those who like lots of tabs and those who keep things lean. I absolutely cannot relate to the first group, as much as I try to understand the mentality. When I’m digging deep into something new I might end up with 20 tabs, but a) it’s an exception and b) the moment I can see no more value I just close them all down and reset.

I have 14 pinned, those are tools I use at least daily at work. Add in a page of search results, 3 or 4 of those opened, HN and some article I'm reading during "clear my head" time, and I'm at 20. I'm usually working on multiple tasks, many of which take multiple days. I have tried to group tabs in windows thematically, but browsers are shit about respecting that (for instance when opening new tabs from other apps).…

I have 14 pinned, those are tools I use at least daily at work.

How do you open these pinned ones? I used to do this as well, but since browsers got better at fuzzy matching (or whatever it is called) in the address bar I figured this keyboard-only approach gets me to commonly visited sites faster. Ctrl-T (or Alt-D to reuse current tab), yc, Enter -> I end up on this site.

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#46

Post by rubyist5eva » Fri, May 14, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

i get anxious when I have more than like 5 tabs open...I don't know how people handle having 20-100+

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#47

Post by Assossa » Fri, May 14, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

azhenley wrote: post #20

Stop using tabs for your code and start using our tool, CodeRibbon: https://utk-se.github.io/CodeRibbon/

Any plans on bringing this to VS Code?

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#48

Post by pessimizer » Fri, May 14, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #42

alfl wrote: post #7

I've opened this in a tab and intend to read it later.

Same here, it is acting like a reading list. Mostly because Bookmark sucks.

Fixing bookmarks would cure tab hoarders like me.

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#49

Post by aidos » Fri, May 14, 2021, 6:58 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #43

aidos wrote: post #15

I feel like there are broadly 2 groups of tech literate users; those who like lots of tabs and those who keep things lean. I absolutely cannot relate to the first group, as much as I try to understand the mentality. When I’m digging deep into something new I might end up with 20 tabs, but a) it’s an exception and b) the moment I can see no more value I just close them all down and reset.

I had hundreds and I use all of them at least once a week

Let’s call it 200. You have 5 days in the week. So that’s 40 tabs you need to visit each day. 5 different tabs each hour, just to get through them. Even! Even if you need to visit all those different things - you know what they are and you want to go there, so why not hit cmd-l and autocomplete on the name from any tab and open it? If I want intercom, I type ‘app.i - enter’. Why would I want it open?

Re: Overcoming Tab Overload

#50

Post by 1MachineElf » Fri, May 14, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

I am one such tab-overloaded computer user.

There are a few tools that help me effectively manage a large number of tabs. (No, Firefox's Tree Style Tabs isn't one of them - while it is great, it is not powerful enough for me.)

The best experience I've had so far is with Tabs Outliner for Google Chrome and Chromium-based browsers. I find that it's UI requires the least amount of clicks and remains performant even when I have a thousand open tabs and hundreds of thousands of saved tabs. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggk...

My two main gripes with Tabs Outliner is that it is not FOSS, and that it often forgets that I've purchased a license for Google Drive sync.

I have yearned for a FOSS alternative to Tabs Outliner. The best one I've tried so far is Tab Fern: https://cxw42.github.io/TabFern/

I love the Tab Fern concept and it would be my primary choice but for the following two issues. First and least consequential, the performance is close to but not 100% on par with Tabs Outliner. Second, you cannot open a single saved tab as with Tabs Outliner - instead it will open up the entire window. This is a headache to deal with when your Window has a lot of tabs (it's also a feature that's on the Tabs Fern roadmap.)

I badly wish there was a Tabs Outliner or Tabs Fern for Firefox. Perhaps architectural differences between Chrome and Firefox mean that it will never happen. In lieu of that, I've settled on Session Sync for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/session-sync/

Session Sync is pretty awesome, especially so because it's also FOSS. It can effectively manage the same amount of tabs as Tabs Outliner while avoiding both of the issues I've mentioned for TabFern. The main problem I have with Session Sync is that these things all require more clicks. For example, if you want to close a tab using either TabFern or Tabs Outliner, you can find the tab in the listing (presumably you searched for it to save time :) and there is an icon right there to close the tab. With Session Sync, you actually have to right-click on the tab before you are presented with the list of available options, which include a Delete option. While this is inconvenient, it's still perfectly workable, and it also has the benefit of slick import/export/backup/sync options that the other two are missing.

As for Skeema, the Chrome extension described in the article, I'd give it a try (if they accept my request for invitation) and would like to see if it could supplant either of the 3 alternatives I've mentioned.