I just wish there were a way to save <i>page state</i> along with a bookmark or similar.<p>Sometimes I'd really like to close a ton of tabs, or just close my browser, or a whole window, and reopen tomorrow.<p>But I'm relying on scroll position to know where I am in 20 different documents, or login credentials that only last for 24 hours, or certain comment threads that have been expanded while others have been collapsed, or my position in a video, etc etc etc.<p>And <i>all of that gets lost</i> if I close a tab or even restart my browser to upgrade.<p>I just want to serialize the current DOM/source files and JavaScript/window state to unserialize it later. Sure, network connections will break but websites can usually handle that.<p>Because while the organization/usage of tabs/bookmarks is one thing, a HUGE roadblock to closing tabs is losing state.<p>I'm sure it wouldn't be even close to trivial for browsers to build, but it still would just be <i>so</i> helpful.
Tree style tabs on the side of my window absolutely changed my computing life. I stopped seeing tabs as a collection of what Im doing and instead started using them + the browsers inclination to save my tabs across restarts to track everything.<p>Ill have a tree of tabs for blogs im reading, a tree for work stuff, a tree for amazon orders, etc. All that context can be closed in a single click. Ill have hundreds of tabs open (but asleep!) and just pick the tree im interested in. Dont need to save bookmarks or save articles for later - they are all there always.
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.<p>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 really want my tabs to just be emacs buffers.<p>Emacs has sooo many different tools to organize and operate on buffers, so different types of users can compose a workflow that works for them, including plain old tabs if they really want. And of course, extensibility, the most important feature imo<p>And you can do this now of course, with w3m or other plaintext browsers, but it's just not that comfy for most webpages these days. And there's emacs-webkit, but it's still a bit of a pita to install.<p>I still use qutebrowser for most things, and with i3/sway plus the save-session function, i can get hierarchy and persistence, and that seems sufficient for now...
I was actually a big user of firefox panorama. I know that it wasn’t easy to discover but it was the best idea of tabs I’ve seen. Expose, grids, and multiple desktops work the best for switching windows, why not have it for tabs?<p>I think that with the right desktop environment we could completely get rid of most tabs. Windows and ie were terrible with opening new windows which made tabs a necessity, but really they should be used for grouping related pages.
Hey, I'm building Amna (<a href="https://getamna.com" rel="nofollow">https://getamna.com</a>) Tabs + Tasks. This research made my day.<p>I think my findings with users are consistent with the researchers. Improved focus, and feeling less overwhelmed, and the larger context management aspect of things goes away when you browse with tasks offloaded from your head.<p>Amna works by managing your Chrome Windows. Instead of organizing tabs after you've done your work, you start with the task first, and click on it. That way you can "scope" a browser to a specific goal, and toss it when you're done. It saves your tabs as your work.<p>It's still a WIP (the website and product are kinda out of sync), you can still try it out and pass along feedback :)
Based on what they show so far[1], I'm not really convinced tasks are the solution. The UI they present seems really clunky for 2021.<p>> He means we need something richer, that we should be collecting information by “task” or another word he brings up again and again, “context.”<p>Yes, context makes sense. But it needs to be context over time. Context that evolves and can be searched and revisited. You should be able to pull up the context of last month, or the 2nd week of May of last year.<p>> “If you think about it, Google does a good job giving us thousands of search results,” says Kittur. “But that entire process after search results is being done pretty much entirely in our heads.<p>Precisely. Fixing tabs is not about the browser at all. It's a problem with search. Search begins and ends at Google. What we <i>really</i> need is a search that starts global and integrates <i>personally</i>. Think of tabs as a sort of cache of what you have brought in from the broader internet. This "cache" should have a simple search interface (think Slack's search, vim Ctrl+P, fzf, Command+Space/Spotlight, etc.) but also have the ability to pull up some sort of window that you can navigate context by other means. Such as date, device, location, etc. "Show me what I was looking at on my phone when I was at Starbucks last Wednesday" kind of thing.<p>Tabs are the fear of losing context. Make context durable, transparent, holistic (i.e. you can zoom to either the trees or the forest), and global (sync across all devices) then you will have largely solved tabs.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90635776/the-twisted-psychology-of-browser-tabs-and-why-we-cant-get-rid-of-them" rel="nofollow">https://www.fastcompany.com/90635776/the-twisted-psychology-...</a>
A few years ago I've argued that a tab is the wrong metaphor, wrong unit of interaction: <a href="https://rybakov.com/blog/open_tabs_are_cognitive_spaces/" rel="nofollow">https://rybakov.com/blog/open_tabs_are_cognitive_spaces/</a><p>I am currently working on a new and fun approach to managing this kind of cognitive spaces, hopefully to be published this month.
I would love to see a Miro-style, infinite canvas, tiling tab manager. If I zoom out past the page, show me a canvas with thumbnails of all my tabs, that I can click and drag to group or arrange however I want. Then let me zoom into one of the thumbnails to switch to that tab.<p>Basically Apple’s mobile Photos.app interface but for browser tabs.
I was a VERY late convert to tabs, and I only use them for browsers now (and not all the time, either). I always felt that the OS X command-tilde functionality, for switching between windows the same way you switch through applications using command-tab, was superior. You're always switching between the most recently used windows, chronologically. You can even remember when something was several keystrokes back, and if you don't remember, you can see it in realtime.<p>It's insanely frustrating to try to switch between two arbitrary tabs in a browser, you have to use the mouse, and keep track of which tab you want to use. I was just running into this problem earlier today, switching between a doc I was reading and a tab I was working in.<p>Of course, having separate windows for everything leads to more visual clutter, and hurts discoverability a little bit.
I miss the Tab Mix Plus Firefox extension so much. I had 3 rows of tabs with more via the scroll wheel, and they were of fixed width.<p>I often ended up with 80 open tabs and switching was no issue. It was such a great feeling being able to close all the tabs after the work was done.<p>With Chrome now I constantly need to drag tabs out in order to create a new window to start a new collection of tabs, so that I normally have about 6 browser windows open, then, when looking for a group of tabs, I first need to find the window. It's the same with Firefox since they moved away from allowing custom XUL code.<p>Here's an example I just found on Google <a href="https://thasulinux.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/tab_mix_plus.png" rel="nofollow">https://thasulinux.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/tab_mix_plus....</a>
I'm currently trying to solve this and more in an application called Cleave.<p><a href="https://cleave.app" rel="nofollow">https://cleave.app</a><p>Cleave lets users persist OS state as a "context" - saving and loading open applications, their windows (and their positions), tabs, open files/documents and so on. Think of it as a workspace or project manager from an IDE, but on the OS-level.<p>I started working on it because of frequent multitasking of heavy work with limited resources; Made it because I wanted to switch between studying, working, reading, looking for an apartment, etc. without manually managing all states or consuming all resources.<p>I'll release an Open Beta (macOS) as soon as I finish license verification and delta updates, but I keep getting sidetracked...
My main problem with tabs is that they function as an additional window manager, meaning I'm constantly using two window managers at the same time, and getting confused between them. For example, I can use Ctrl+Tab to cycle through browser tabs and Alt+Tab to cycle through windows. I can't use either to cycle through everything I have open.
The article refers to their “new” tab / task management tool. The web page[0] for it has no information or screenshots. Anyone have a link to see the tool in action?<p>[0] <a href="https://www.skeema.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.skeema.com/</a>
I am ruthless with my tabs. I always close them all at the end of my day.<p>Just like Inbox 0, I aim for Tab 0. Serenity is the reward for this small disciplined effort.<p>Close them. They're not going anywhere. You can always find the links back tomorrow. An entire multi-million industry wants you to find them back as easily as possible.<p>You might even find better ones when you start fresh.<p>It's just your loss aversion instincts kicking in[1]. It's how your brain is wired. But we live in the golden age of information retrieval. You don't need to hoard tabs. Your brain just doesn't know.<p>Trust me, if you can. Close them.<p>It will be ok.<p>[1]<a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion</a>
I think somehow I have overcome this tab overloadding problem on my own<p>I have restricted myself from browsing internet on mobile phone, so I only view them from my personal computer<p>I always keep a note on what I browse, regardless of how important or useless it is (except entertainment stuff to some extent)<p>I am using this note taking method to all my work as well, for example, searching online about security aspect of several CI/CD pipeline tools that my company use<p>The notes that I create are all mostly markdown files, with names to their own, so I can grep or find whenever I want, and encrypt and archive the whole folder as I want to back them up<p>By note taking down the links that I have viewed, sometimes with some wordings for explanation, I can keep track most of them, not all, becacuse sometimes I use namings that I couldn't recall and that's totally fine, I can still grep/find as I want anyway<p>I would just put down some file names so you guys can get a better idea<p>1. 3d-printing.md<p>2. asm.md<p>3. algorithms.md<p>4. browser.md<p>5. cybersecurity.md<p>6. hacking.md<p>7. graphics.md<p>8. gamedev0.md<p>9. reverse-engineering.md<p>10. storage-hard-drive.md<p>11. vpn-proxy.md<p>12. video-hardware-acceleration.md<p>13. game-engine.md<p>14. freelance-startups-business-side-hustle.md<p>15. fuchsia.md<p>16. electrical-and-computer-engineering.md<p>17. electronics.md<p>and a lot more like<p>300. linux/doc/linux-kernel.md<p>301. android/doc/android-apps.md<p>302. macos/doc/macos.md<p>303. windows/doc/windows-install.md<p>Edit: if you are wondering why do this at all when everything is just one google search away, well, i guess that's the whole point
It’s not a tooling issue IMHO. It’s about accepting that you do not need to hoard every single piece of information. Once you accept to let go and develop the habit to close your tabs regularly (for example at the end of each day), the problem is solved. No more anxiety related to your browser state!<p>I was a hardcore hoarder, with 300+ tabs all the time, until I realized I was the source of the issue. Now I open as many tabs as I need during the day, then just know I will close everything at the end of the day and start a fresh session. It’s very relaxing. If I really need something I wrote it down in my notes somewhere but that’s really not often.
Stop using tabs for your code and start using our tool, CodeRibbon:<p><a href="https://utk-se.github.io/CodeRibbon/" rel="nofollow">https://utk-se.github.io/CodeRibbon/</a>
I just declare a tab bankruptcy every once in a while. Close everything, forget I opened those tabs. If it is important enough, it's already stashed away in a format that lends itself to offline reading. If it's not yet stashed, it will bubble up eventually from among other things.<p>If I don't have time to stash it away, whom am I kidding? I'm not going to come back to it in a near future anyway. I already have a couple of things that remind me of how guilty I am by not coming back to them, why add more?
I have 0 problems with tabs. I used to and man they can be annoying.<p>The system that finally worked for me is to bind "Close all Tabs to Left" to Ctrl + Left, likewise for right, and Close All Except Open Tab to Ctrl + Up.<p>I found this enables painless instant culls, I just save URLs everything I want to survive a total cull (it's hardly ever more than 2 URLs, most tabs are junk which I suppose is the main problem).<p>Ctrl + W for Close Current Tab and Ctrl + Shift + T for Reopen Closed Tab are also pretty useful (require no bind).
Personally I found a very simple approach that works great for me.<p>In the beginning of the pandemic I tried to reduce social media exposure, to maintain some degree of mental health and reduce distractions.<p>The way I did it was first to remove all the apps from my phone. This had the added benefit of improving the battery life. This meant that if I wanted to go on fb or Twitter, then I had to use the browser versions which are generally slower, not so optimized for phone usage, and overall the UX is much worse.<p>Even this though was not enough. Firefox would gladly save my session and despite the subpar UX, I still found myself going back to it more often than I would like.<p>The solution to this was simple:<p>Incognito.<p>Coupled together with a 2FA and disabling the password manager autocomplete by removing the URL from the relevant entries, it made such a huge difference.<p>Then I started using incognito for more things, like HN, where I would open 6-7 tabs "to read them later" and I never did, so they kept piling up.<p>For me this works great, especially on the phone. If I really want to read something I read it there and then. If for whatever reason I don't, and android decides to terminate my Firefox then so be it. If I really want to I can search for it again, but then I ask myself whether it is worth it.
One thing I do is keep a text file with lists of links, e.g. "programming", "gardening", "health" etc and if I haven't looked at a tab after a few days, I copy the URL and put it in the appropriate list, then close the tab.<p>If the browser prompted me to "archive" a tab after a few days and select a category, I'd probably use the functionality.
I've found doing something that sounds crazy very helpful in overcoming my own personal tab overload: automatically closing tabs after they go ignored for a certain amount of time (~12 hours for me). It's garbage collection for tabs! I use the Tab Wrangler Chrome extension[0] for the job, but there are others too.<p>Turns out that I don't actually care about the vast majority of tabs that I leave open—but can't seem to close!—and the extension makes it easy to re-open any automatically closed ones that I did happen to care about. The result is logging on each day to much less tab clutter than I left the night before.<p>0: <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-wrangler/egnjhciaieeiiohknchakcodbpgjnchh" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-wrangler/egnjh...</a>
I don't need a better way to manage the tabs I have open I need to quit the habit of opening dozens of them. Its digital hoarding.<p>Maybe it's overly dramatic of me to compare it to hoarding, it does legitimately increase productivity. But it also tends to spiral out of control now and then (for me).
Here is their browser extension for "rethinking" tabs: <a href="https://www.skeema.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.skeema.com/</a> (currently invite + waitlist). Was really hoping for images of the actual, HCI-research-informed UI update, but alas.
Vivaldi is such a great browser, it has really wonderful and hands down the best tab management features.
<a href="https://vivaldi.com/features/tab-management/" rel="nofollow">https://vivaldi.com/features/tab-management/</a>
I used to have many dozens of tabs open statically, kind of like a TODO list I never get round to. Some tabs are open all the time for email, chat as well.<p>I've eliminated those tabs and now have tabs related to what I'm currently doing only. There could still be dozens, but importantly they do get closed.<p>To prevent the static tabs, I do 2 things:<p>1) Map tabs I monitor (email, chat etc) to a streamdeck, pressing a physical button every time I want to check<p>2) Save those static "TODO" tabs to a task manager[1] and treat them as tasks.<p>[1]: My own task manager: <a href="https://github.com/naggie/dstask/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/naggie/dstask/</a> -- saving the URL in note means I can open the tab in a browser again in a command (open)
"... or ashamed by how many they had open"<p>What is this? I for one am proud of my (minimum) 4 dozen open tabs on average.<p>But on a more serious note, as a SE I rejoice when I see a "<5 minutes read" article. If it's more than that I just leave it open (if it seems interesting enough). Usually I go back to my backlog during the next week or so and read the ones I still deem interesting based on the title and a quick scroll through, those that don't catch my interest any more or are just too darn long will get C-w'd.<p>Also when I have a few dozen tabs open in my phone I just send them to my desktop(s) and close them on the phone - they were either too long to be read on a phone, or required some investigation before a commitment.
On my iPad this is a problem. On my desktops, I have Firefox with Tridactyl installed, turning off the tab bar, nav bar, and menu. Everything is handled via keyboard if I can help it, including tab navigation: with a single keystroke I can start searching my open tabs fairly quickly by typing a portion of the tab title, and at end of day I bookmark tabs I want to read later with one command, clear all remaining tabs with another. Super easy, and no need for a learning algorithm to start trying to learn my surfing habits.<p>Not trying to sound snarky, this tool just seems a bit like overkill. It might be useful on my iPad where it is cumbersome to do those steps, but it would also be useful to have Tridactyl there too.
I still miss Opera's MDI (Multiple Document Interface). Using that vs using tabs felt like using a tiled window manager vs graphical window manager. You could get so much more efficient with the MDI once you dialed in shortcuts, window switching and rearranging, etc.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple-document_interface" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple-document_interface</a><p><a href="https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/old-software/web-browsers/opera-2-0" rel="nofollow">https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/old-software/web-browsers/op...</a>
I can highly recommend Tabli [1] an open source chrome extension that you can use to save and restore groups of tabs very quickly.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.gettabli.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.gettabli.com/</a>
>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.<p>how about multiple layer tabs<p>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.
Appears to describe a tab grouping extension, but the closed beta (and lack of screenshots) suggests beta testing is machine learning to hash out the UI and grouping criteria. Unless they plan for it to be a service.
Grouping tabs by topic to read them later and from other browsers was one of the main problem I wanted to address in my workflow.<p>My current solution is to having developed a webextension + server system (<a href="https://github.com/domovikapp/domovik-server/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/domovikapp/domovik-server/</a>) where I can stash any tab in a TOREAD list, and those replace my blank new tab page. Crude, but it does the job for me.
Salvaged from my own current tab overload:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookwheel" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookwheel</a><p>I occurred to me that this might make a nice working metaphor for web browsers:<p>Make a virtual wheel with a defined (default-manageable) number of positions to fill.<p>Add ability to rotate, or slide, in a number of such wheels.<p>Any wheel that doesn't get active use for some reasonable amount of time goes automatically from active inventory to searchable long term archives.
The real problem here is that the "back" button doesn't really make anyone happy. If it were instantaneous (like the page was kept alive in an invisible tab, essentially) and preserved state, then 75% of the use cases for tabs would go away.<p>The remaining use cases are more around opening a bunch of links from the same page, so we'd keep tabs around for that, but maybe auto-group them with the page of origin for some contextualization.
I don't understand the "having a million tabs open workflow" that seems so common<p>I frequently move 1-2 tabs to the left side and use "close tabs to right". Probably do this 4-5 times per day.<p>If I end up needing something I just look in history or ctrl + shift + t to get it back.<p>Having too many open feels super distracting to me and makes it harder to focus.<p>I also use bookmarks a lot too, so that might be the difference.
I started doing "inbox zero" ten years a go and somehow ended up in a bit of an OCD situation.<p>Now I have to close/archive anything I'm not currently using.<p>Emails, apps, tabs, background processes, messenger contacts.<p>If I dealt with it and isn't something that is used on a regular basis, like the WhatsApp conversations of my partners, it has to go.
Tabs were 95% solved years ago by the visionary genius Piro with his "Tree Style Tab" extension: <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/" rel="nofollow">https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...</a>
So weird to me. I think this every time I read about browser tabs, organization strategies, etc.<p>I rarely have more than half a dozen tabs open. And that's if I'm busy. Normally it's one or two -- whatever it is that I'm currently working on.<p>And at the end of the day -- all closed. History and cache cleared. Start clean the next day.
I'm glad that such research is being carried out, since the browser is the main tool and chaos is happening in it.<p>I use LiveComment for manage 10k+ tabs. Pretty practical <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/livecomment" rel="nofollow">https://www.npmjs.com/package/livecomment</a>
My thing is a chrome extension dumping all open tabs. But that's all it does. Also a centralized personal store of info, so I can save something for future research... have a scatter brain, randomly researching stuff.<p>What I wish had reliable persistence is Windows 10 virtual desktops.
I just open three browsers.<p>Vivaldi for music, long running stuff, gmail, Jira.<p>Firefox for searching, transient stuff.<p>Chrome for its dev tools.<p>It means I can kill either FF and Chrome entirely at any point and lose nothing valuable, not interrupt anything.<p>That and I don’t hoard tabs, I either bookmark and close or just close and use the history.
For the podcast fan:
<a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/02/14/806137130/episode-972-the-cryptoqueen" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2020/02/14/806137130/episode-972-the-cry...</a>
I am glad this came up. I had just started work on synchronizing my Emacs org-mode clock tasks with tree style tabs and i see there are some other good things to check out in this thread. Also signed up for Skeema waiting list.
I wish there was a way to completely force firefox to keep only one window open.<p>I imagine that would help with my tab-hoarding, as I tend to branch into more windows (up to ~50) once they reach too many (20 or so) tabs each.
Opera solved this problem egregiously with workspaces. No need for extensions or other tricks. This feature alone is worth a try of what is regardless the most ergonomic browser I've ever used.
I recently switched after decades on Safari to a task-oriented browser called Min: <a href="https://minbrowser.org" rel="nofollow">https://minbrowser.org</a>. It’s fantastic!
related:<p>TabFS: Mount your Browser Tabs as a Filesystem <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25600338" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25600338</a>
Generally limit browser tabs to 5. Like the old tmobile myFavs 5. Helps keep focus otherwise "unlimited" tabs makes me totally distracted. Especially on HN.
I am one such tab-overloaded computer user.<p>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.)<p>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. <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggk...</a><p>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.<p>I have yearned for a FOSS alternative to Tabs Outliner. The best one I've tried so far is Tab Fern: <a href="https://cxw42.github.io/TabFern/" rel="nofollow">https://cxw42.github.io/TabFern/</a><p>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.)<p>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: <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/session-sync/" rel="nofollow">https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/session-sync/</a><p>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.<p>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.
Here's a radical solution - close tabs when you're done with them.<p>There's a little known feature in browsers called <i>bookmarks</i> that's like tabs, but they don't consume any RAM or bandwidth when you're not using them, and they don't clutter your UI. You can search them, group them into "tab folders", even synchronize them across devices.<p>Spread the word - bookmarks are the future.