Seems the clutter and organizational requirement is more of a productivity loss than gain.
Never understood this.
This is a strange generalization to make. I think it's more of a subset of computer users in general, not just Mac users...
I wish I could have virtual desktops or similar, per project. Any application I open for that project would be specific to that desktop.
In other words, my "taxes" tab might have:
- A browser for my bank.
- A browser for my 401k
- email messages regarding taxes
- a notepad for tax notes
- a todo list for tax steps completed and upcoming
This could alleviate the tab problem.
(or it could just explode the problem, I haven't been able to live this dream and it might not be so dreamy)
How? Tabs preserve the navigation history too. Bookmarks don’t. Searching for it doesn’t work when you don’t remember which website it was. Following links from search results and links from those pages (from the search results) to get somewhere that seems like it could help…that’s just one of the ways tabs get accumulated.
Keeping tabs around as a reminder to work on them or keep track of progress
Keeping frequently used tabs for quick access; has a diminishing return
Avoid closing tabs in fear of missing out on valuable information
The hopes to process more info than capable; while aware of the situation
Memory and mental model; Organize tasks with windows, desktops, browsers
Difficulties in judging the current and potential relevance of tabs in the future
I visit every single tab multiple times a day and closing them out makes no sense. I need multiple windows for Jira, dev environment, testing, production, misc corporate intranet sites, servicenow, etc.
All of them have information updating live continuously. Why would I close them?
It's not even 100 tabs, but it's definitely a lot.
I keep it open because I can more conveniently context-switch back to it when I need to, rather than attempt to retract my steps from a search query all over again.
An open tab is state in suspension - it’s sleep mode. A bookmark is hibernation.
Maybe add to reading list, close the tab and let it sit in there
To answer the actual question: I don't. Either I read it immediately or will never get back to it. There is always enough fresh content. I don't need another backlog.
And let's be honest, if you have a backlog of 7400 pages, neither do you.
Do people often seek out obscure pages without entering from a more common context?
e.g. hackernews to any article link
That's really hard to Google, so I keep those tabs open!
if i were to use a bookmark, then every time i'd advance a few pages in the comic, i'd have to delete the old bookmark and create a new one.
it is quite ironic that a browser feature called bookmark does not actually function like a physical bookmark for printed books.
So they are not that different from bookmarks then?
Finally. I hope we get tab groups that work with multi containers.
I have 298 tabs across 8 windows open right now and I can already tell firefox is about to crash at any moment. I go to about:memory and mash the buttons in the "free memory" box to buy some extra time, but eventually firefox goes down in flames and I lose all my open tabs. When it does finally crash Firefox can never restore my tabs, but I blame myself/my settings for that.
When things get to this point where I know firefox will die soon I end up bookmarking them all or even copying each URL into a text document with dreams that I'll go back to them after my browser has been closed and re-opened, but I almost never manage it. At least I have the option I guess and I know that if I ever do I'll find things that are of interest to me. There's just no shortage of other things that are of interest to me online so the newest stuff tends to win out.
I have Firefox set to reopen tabs when it starts and, on the very rare occasion it does crash or the power goes out, the tabs are back when I reopen Firefox.
Basically I want to be able to turn a window full of tabs into some kind of document, where I can add metadata about the window and tabs, organized into sections, and which creates an archive of each page while maintaining the option of reloading the latest version if it still happens to exist.
This would also involve a better way to select a bunch of tabs at once and move them to the window they belong on.
If anyone knows of something which works this way, I'd love to hear about it.
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/session-buddy/edacc...
What Firefox lacks for me, is the ability to sync these open tabs to different devices seamlessly.
The only browsers that do this well right now are Edge and Arc browser, and this is the reason I abandoned Firefox about 1 year ago.
My tabs fall into the following categories:
- unfinished/long running projects/topics/research: for these I use a version of the Tabs Aside! extension that I've modified, which converts them to bookmarks.
- tabs I will want to look at someday and further categorize and/or take action: for these I implemented a babashka script that when I click on an URL it fetches the page, extracts the title and displays it and asks me if I want to open it now, or save it for later in an org-file. This doesn't work, unfortunately, for URLs that I open from another FF page. For these, my long term plan involves archiving the text and doing RAG on them, as they relate to my long term interests/projects/curiosities.
- tabs I need for the actively running projects/tasks
