

Extreme tab browsing - Garbage
http://glandium.org/blog/?p=2180

======
srean
Open tabs are like frozen functions (or even better, frozen stacks or trees).
In addition to the content itself they also preserve the info about how I got
there and, hopefully, some notion about what I intended to do next. This wont
be captured as easily in a bookmark or evernote.

Right now I have 8 browser windows open and on average each one of them has 30
tabs open and this is on a laptop that has 512Mb of RAM. I can pull this of
with FF 3.6 (some what tweaked), which of course I leave open for months on
end. On another machine I am running FF 8.02a, it definitely seems lighter,
but most of the add-ons that I use do not support it yet. Using Chrome this
way will kill my box(es).

So yes I am one of those incomprehensible corner cases that many complain
about. The one that expects that software should be tight and memory leak
free. This is in contrast to what I get to hear a lot, "leaks dont matter,
just restart your browser" or "memory is cheap, go buy some". No thank you, I
would still like to retain control over who gets to decide (a)when to close an
application and (b) where my money should be best spent.

Why do I do this ? perhaps because its is the most unobtrusive way of
deferring or saving a thread. Tabs are my poor man's alternative to evernote,
reminders, frozen trains of thought etc etc, that I do not yet consider
permanent enough to bookmark and those that I can organize spatially and into
groups and all that with minimum effort.

So essentially this is my way of maintaining two sets of bookmarks one
volatile, spatially mapped, (almost) random access, higher priority and most
crucially with a history that I can access with back&forth buttons, the other
more permanent bookmark has a different set of complementary properties. Some
of my tabs graduate to being bookmarks but not all.

To do all this I have to enlist the assistance of a few add-ons that keeps the
inactive tabs unloaded. I use one called restore-control[1] (that or
bartabs[2]). The other add-on I use is searchTab[3] to index the contents of
the pages so that I can search for it based on a few words that have stuck in
my memory. But usually I have a fairly good handle of where spatially they
will be located so I dont really need to search.

[1][https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/restore-
contr...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/restore-control/)

[2] <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bartab/>

[3] <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search-tab/>

~~~
morsch
Have you looked at _Tree Style Tabs_ [1]?

I think it fits right in with your characterization of tabs as frozen stacks
of information. It takes the concept even further by visualizing the
relationship between tabs. I compulsively open stuff in background tabs, and
it's very nice to have those tabs as children to the originating tab. In part
because it lets me kill a parent tab along with all children, but without
affecting anything else, with a few clicks. It also lets me drag a whole
thread of tabs to a new window or bookmark it etc. etc. Finally, having a
vertical tab list makes efficient use of wide-screen displays and you can
still read useful amounts of the page title even with 25+ tabs.

Oh and here's another one that might be even more useful to you, with your
emphasis on the browser history: _Tab History Redux_ [2]. Tabs opened from
links (e.g. via mouse3) retain the history of the originating tab. Yeah. This
is one of those things which I can't understand why it hasn't been part of all
browsers for years. It just makes sense.

Both addons work fine in Firefox Nightly (9) with forced compatibility using
the _Add-on Comaptibility Reporter_ [3].

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-
ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/)

[2] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-
history-r...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-history-
redux/)

[3] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-
compat...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-
compatibility-reporter/)

~~~
sixtofour
When I used Firefox, Tree Style Tabs was the _first_ addon I always installed.
It's wonderful, and it's one of the two things I most wish Chromium had (the
other being good bookmark management).

------
5l
The fact that people do this is a strong indication we're missing something
fundamental with the browser UI. I'm not nearly as bad as the guy in the
article but I do open ridiculous numbers of tabs at times.

It seems to me that tabs + bookmarks doesn't quite cut it. Perhaps with the
exception of pinned apps we need to move away from the idea of 'open' pages
entirely and really rethink how navigating the browser's history works.

~~~
hollerith
>The fact that people do this is a strong indication we're missing something
fundamental with the browser UI.

When I hit the backspace key, there is a significant probability that I will
have to wait for the old page to download and render again. (Wether the re-
download and re-render happens seems to depend on how the maintainer of the
web page set the cache-control.) Although I understand the advantage to non-
technical users of doing things this way, as a technically-adept user, I would
have preferred for the back button never to cause a re-download or a re-
render. (I know that I would have no trouble figuring out when manually to
cause a re-download (using e.g. the reload button) because that is the way
Lynx did it years ago.)

My point is that the main reason I open new tabs is so that I can definitely
return to the current page without waiting for the page to re-download and re-
render. I would be happy with the back and forward buttons and the history
menu if using these things did not often cause me to wait.

~~~
5l
I switched to Opera for exactly this reason; it's way faster at jumping back
and forward between previously rendered pages. As a consequence I open far
fewer tabs than I did in Chrome or FF* but I still open a hell of a lot. So
speed is definitely a factor, but I still think there's UI issues at play.

* _Especially when searching Google or reading HN; I'm more inclined to navigate back and forward between results rather than middle click everything into new tabs_

------
jaredsohn
I browse this way. Here's my best guess as to why (which could possibly be
useful in understanding why others do, too).

* Some sites (Netflix, banking sites, etc.) can be annoying to have to log back into and get to a certain page so I just keep them open. Yes, some of those sites will expire the login anyway, but I don't know when I'll want to visit them again.

* Keeping tabs open just feels abundant and allows me to ignore having a certain discipline for awhile (closing tabs when done). It kind of feels like opening the Sunday newspaper and tearing out each section and throwing them on the table. Yes, it is a little messy, but it helps you feel good for awhile. Further, at some point you can just discard it all and nothing was really lost beyond possibly feeling embarassed by people watching you or feeling inefficient.

* I think it also metaphorically better fits how I learn. I like to build connections between my previous knowledge and things that I read. Keeping something open after I'm done with it can be convenient in that I might discover it again later after learning related information (helping me to understand it in a different way). Or perhaps the page has been updated with new comments that I don't care enough about to subscribe to, but would like to see again if I happen to run across it. I think it also helps flow, especially if I'm working on a new project.

This only works if you have plenty of memory (which I do.)

------
janjan
If I had one wish for future browsers, it it is:

I wish there would be a good/convenient way to open several independent
browser instances for different purposes. There should be a way to name each
instance.

For example at work I really wish I could have one Chrome instance for
research on project 1, one instance for project 2 and one for private stuff.
When I close on of the them there should be a way to reopen it later exactly
in the state I left it.

On startup I want to see a main browser window which list all my instances.
When I click on one of them, a normal Chrome broswer opens with all the
corresponding tabs (and perhaps specialized bookmarks).

Right now I have about 100 tabs open for different projects and private stuff.
With the proposed systems I could put several browser instances on different
workspaces next to the editor/console of the specific project.

~~~
a3_nm
Firefox profiles?

~~~
janjan
Yes, profiles would be some kind of solution but I'd like to have something
more dynamic where I create/delete/clone profiles/instances on the fly.

~~~
sid0
Shouldn't actually take more than 5 minutes of you writing a few scripts.

    
    
      open: firefox --no-remote -P <profile>
      create: firefox -CreateProfile <new name>
      delete: rm -rf <location of profile>, e.g. %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\<profile name> on Windows
      clone: cp -R <location of profile> <new name>

------
Tichy
Makes me think of the alleged OS X philosophy that you should never worry
about closing apps. So what if bookmarks and tabs are essentially the same? If
you never worry about closing tabs, they are essentially just bookmarks that
load really fast. It seems inevitable that things will head that way. So there
should be better tools for managing tabs, similar to bookmarks (and there are
no great tools for bookmarks yet, either).

------
glenjamin
When you're trying to use awesomebar to find a tab you already have open based
on a URL, and the tab itself is not loaded into memory until you switch to it,
and the page will load in <1s (ie. most web pages).

Why bother leaving the tab open?

I'm quite compulsive about keeping my tab bar tidy, getting back to recently
closed tabs or commonly used ones is generally done through awesomebar or some
TMP clicking shortcuts.

------
sixtofour
I used to think I was a freak for having, sometimes, as many as 20 or 30 tabs
open. My kid looked over my shoulder once and laughed at me, said "Really
Dad?"

But I see by the other comments that I'm not a freak. In fact I'm an amateur.

I can now hold my head up, and not have to slink around and hide my browser
and its completely normal 15 tabs.

------
mnutt
> Switch to an existing tab when following a link to an already opened url

I think this would be pretty jarring unless you restricted it only to tabs
that had just been opened. A better approach would be to cache the URL you
typed and any URLs it redirected to in the AwesomeBar lookup table.

------
athst
I think it's possible that this extreme tab usage could be pretty common. I
don't have 500 tabs like him, but I can get into the 50-100 range. For me, too
many tabs isn't the problem - it's just that browsers can't seem to handle so
many tabs without using up all memory.

~~~
khafra
Try Opera--my only multifarous-tab problem is clicking on one to select it
without closing it when I have so many open that the "x" is the entire width
of the tab.

------
diziet
Opening hundreds of tabs in different browsers across multiple 2560x1600
resolution monitors is the reason the computers I use have 16gb+ of ram.

(And running VMs, but that does not make it as extravagant)

------
ajpatel
People that do this are NUTS. Ever heard of Evernote, Read It Later, or the
plethora of websites that exist for this very reason? Man up and shell out a
few bucks...there is NO reason you should have more than 10-12 tabs open on a
regular, consistent basis...

~~~
sixtofour
There are a lot of different ways to use different tools, because there are a
lot of different people who think and organize differently. Yours is not the
only way that people manage information in their head, but I'm sure it works
great for you.

A couple scenarios for how I get a lot of tabs open:

\- <ahem> Hacker News. Scan down the page, and for each interesting article,
middle click the article and the comments link. Work your way through the tabs
(maybe going back and forth between "work" and HN).

\- Search. Middle click the most promising results. Work your way through the
tabs, possibly bookmarking something that you know you'll want again.

ReadItLater or any other temporary archive seems like procedural overkill for
something you intend to come back to in a few minutes to half an hour.

Bookmarking the same sort of material seems inappropriate since most of what's
in those tabs isn't yet determined to be bookmarkworthy.

I didn't dream this up, it's just how I naturally organize my short term
browser use. I think "short term" is the important phrase there.

Finally, there's a middle ground between lots of tabs and ReadItLater. Chrome
has a nice extension called Session Buddy, that records the tabs in your
current session. Hit the button and another tab (ironically) opens, showing
your current and recent sessions. Now close as many tabs as you like, get back
on task, and gradually work your way through the sites listed on the session
buddy tab.

Lots of ways to do everything. I really don't think I'm nuts for doing it this
way.

~~~
ajpatel
A few minutes or half an hour are different...this guy has upwards of 500 tabs
- you can't come back to that in a few minutes or half an hour...

I said 10-12 tabs consistently - and by that I mean app tabs that remain open.
The rest should be opened for research as needed AND THEN CLOSED WHEN
FINISHED. For everything else that you need to consistently check updates on,
you need to find a way to turn it into an RSS feed or Twitter feed or whatever
that feeds into an existing tab for an app you already have open (e.g. Google
Reader or your social media aggregator of choice).

This is not "my" way - this is the way of the human brain. You can't do that
many things at once and you can't focus on that many things at once. You would
be overwhelmed by 500 tabs of information...that's why most of us have 1 site
where all our information aggregates and 1 email address where the rest
forward and 1 cell phone rather than 5-6, etc. I'm saying that people that do
this type of EXTREME tab browsing are inherently disorganized and lack focus
and attention to anything they do.

Yeah, downvote it to hell, I really don't mind. If you do this on a regular
basis though, I'd love to hear from you and how you feel about whether you are
an organized individual and one who adequately focuses on the things that are
important to you.

~~~
tresta
I tend to have about 100 tabs open in my web browser. Of those, 10-15 are for
pages that I always have open, ~50 are for pages that are relatively temporary
(as in a few weeks), and another ~25 for more temporary (days), and then up to
50 for very temporary (like when I'm browsing through hacker news and so on).

I would say that I am relatively organized, but apparently in another way than
you are. As an example of how I organize my tabs, I have 8 tabs open with
minecraftwiki/forum, 5 imdb tabs with bad '50s horror flicks for a movie night
I'm planning, 4 tabs with articles about an emacs customization that I'm
planning, 10 tabs with doxygen generated documentation for a C++ project I'm
doing, 6 tabs have arduino documentation for a hardware project I'm halfway
through, a few appdb.winehq pages for games I have problems running, some
wiki-pages with books I'm thinking about buying, and a few with articles I'm
thinking about sharing with my friends. This is in 3 windows on 2 virtual
desktops (on my main machine, I have another 20 tabs open on my laptop).

I don't get "[1]00 tabs of information", I get perhaps 10 different topics
that I can choose between, and when I have done that I can just scroll over
the group of tabs that make up a topic to get a quick overview. After this,
I'm usually synced up with what I was thinking the last time I was working
with the project.

Btw, I use 2 rss readers (google reader and akregator), the akregator one for
things I shouldn't read while working. I have 2 cell phones. I also have 3
email endpoints, one for studies, one for personal mail and one for work.

There is nothing inherently disorganized about this (IMO), since it gives me a
very clear distinction between my different tasks.

