I think I'm missing something here. You want 100s of pages accessible from a vertical list, but are happy to wait for them to reload when you re-open one... aren't you just looking for a bookmarks list?
> If you're a semi-professional web browser, you probably make heavy use of tabs.<p>And if you are a professional one, you have less than 10 tabs opened because you are focused, and know what you are browsing.
I've always had 150+ plus tabs open ever since the days of Firefox 3 and I've always run stock browsers + adblock. Both Firefox and Chrome seem to handle it fine, never noticed any performance issues running on fairly standard machines. The key is to max out the RAM of any machine you're on. Nowadays with fast SSDs though, even fast RAM doesn't matter very much.
For tab groups, why not use Firefox's built-in system? The icon next to the "New Tab" button shows you tabs groups and lets you make new ones, drag tabs from one group to another, and name tab groups. Firefox also takes tabs out of memory when they're in a group you're not looking at.
I disable JS. Makes the web much nicer. For the occasional broken site that requires it to render text, hit CTRL-SHIFT-s (using surf) to enable it until that tab (using tabbed) is closed.
I have 227 browser tabs open, can open any of them instantly without even touching the network and my computer runs fine for <i>weeks</i>. Here's my secret:<p>Opera 12<p>Chrome and Firefox might have more dev time thrown at them, but when it comes to being well-engineered they have a LOOOOONG way to go yet.
Sometimes I feel like I open way too many tabs, when I really could reopen them anytime, by either using a bookmark or just googling the page (say python documentation). I can't imagine a use case where you needed that many open tabs.
Tab groups is one of the most underrated features in Firefox. I always have dozens of tabs open in various groups, and it mostly doesn't affect the performance.
As a former multiple hundreds of tab users. I did t know I could write a hn article about it. :P
But the way I solved was by not having all 100s+ tabs in 1 window frame. But by dragging out a few tabs into another windows frame. And sorting that way. Combined with multiple 27" 2560*1440 monitors. I never had any issues.
Most the plug-ins are meh or add instability. Never had any slowness or issues with performance or crashes and I'm not doing anything special or different at all. Or at least I don't think I am.<p>However as of late I've been trying to keep total count under 20. Though it's often quite difficult.