

Why You Should Never Have More Than Nine Browser Tabs Open - vog
http://lifehacker.com/5984149/why-you-should-never-have-more-than-nine-browser-tabs-open

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dalke
Wake up. Open laptop. Skim through the pages of HN. "Open in new tab" for all
the ones which look interesting. This could be a couple dozen new tabs. Close-
tab (cmd-W on my Mac) to close the HN page. Read next tab. Close-tab. Read.
Repeat until done.

My scenario doesn't match any of the 4 listed arguments against opening more
than 9 tabs. For example, the user interaction is easy; "open in new tab" and
"close tab". Both easily done from the keyboard.

~~~
bartl
Yeah, I wish browsers supported a tab mode where a tab can be open, but use no
memory apart from URL and history, thus: no page content. A bit like how
currently in Firefox a closed pinned tab is still visible in the browser tabs
list, greyed out.

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vog
At first, I thought that the number 9 in the title was arbritrary. I was just
wondering why the author didn't choose a round number, such as 8 or 16. Or a
link-baiting number, such as 3, 7 or 10.

I was surprised when I found out that the number 9 has an actual meaning in
the article:

 _> ... but why pick 9 as the upper limit? Simple: every modern browser
supports using Ctrl-1 to go to the first open tab, Ctrl-2 to the second, and
so on ... (Control-9 always jumps to the last tab, however many you have open,
by the way.)_

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wynter
All true, but easier said than done :/

~~~
vog
I must confess that I never had this problem in the first place. I'm quickly
annoyed if I have too many open tabs, long before I even reach 9 tabs.

I never understood other people with their 3 to 6 rows of open tabs. [1]
However, I never had any real arguments to convince them to change that habit.
That's why the article was an interesting read for me.

[1] In the old days, browsers stacked their tabs in second row when the first
row was full. And opened a third row when the second was full, etc.

~~~
wynter
Yeah I see that. I think it's not a tabbing problem, but more of a "I really
want to multitask" problem. Better organization can definitely help keeping
the number of tabs open at a safe limit.

