
On Browser Tabs - aqader
https://abuqader.substack.com/p/on-browser-tabs
======
ssivark
I... have a problem. I recently had ~1600 tabs open in Firefox. With a lot of
painstaking effort I cut it down to ~750. Quite some distance to go still.

The default interface sucks once you have more than 50 tabs. I wish there were
easy REPL-ish programmatic access to the list/dict of tabs (so I could filter
out all GitHub tabs, or close all stackoverflow tabs, etc) and that was a
first class citizen in the browser interface. This is one reason I’m really
excited about the Nyxt browser.

PS: Part of it might be FOMO, but part of it is also that these links
represent certain threads of thought/exploration and are like bookmarks of
things to revisit at a later time. Yes, in principle I could export the list
of tabs to a text file, and begin anew, but that’s not a fully satisfactory
solution. I think we need tools & interfaces to better (more holistically)
accommodate people’s intellectual workflows; what we have today is geared much
more towards consumption.

As an example: why can’t we easily group tabs into projects and have
_bidirectional sync_ between the browser and project related resources (Eg:
Some markdown/org file, or sync with Evernote/Notion/Roam, etc) so that
whenever I resume working on the project, I get a warm start with the context
mapped out (continuing from the previous session). And I want a much tighter
relationship between my tabs and my project notes (akin to bibliography of
references), including annotations on webpages, etc. If we are to use the web
more effectively, the ecosystem surrounding browsers needs to grow up and help
us get there.

~~~
rsync
"Yes, in principle I could export the list of tabs to a text file, and begin
anew ..."

I came here to complain that, actually, _you can 't_.

Or rather, it's surprisingly complicated to export a simple list of current
tab URLs to a plain old text file.

You need to dig several directories deep into /Library (or whatever, depending
on your OS) and then use JSON tools to export ... I've already lost most
people.

Why can't we just have:

about:tabs

... which is nothing but a one URL per line, text listing of all of our
currently open tabs ? How simple and nice and useful would that be ?

Go searching for "how can I export tabs" or "how can I save tab urls" and
you'll see thousands of people trying (usually in vain) to achieve this very,
very simple thing.

~~~
aaron_m04
For Firefox, there is Export Tabs URLs.

~~~
rsync
No, I don't want an extension for a simple, basic piece of functionality that
everyone keeps asking for.

about:tabs would be the easiest thing in the world.

~~~
jhardy54
> about:tabs would be the easiest thing in the world.

Thanka for volunteering! Can you link me to your patch?

~~~
rsync
rsync.net will pay USD $1000 for this.

Consider this an official, public bounty. Expires 2020-12-31.

I don't have time to write this patch but I _especially don 't have time_ for
the lame, tired suggestion that FOSS cannot be critiqued by anyone but the
authors.

(The bounty is $1500 if _you_ "jhardy54" write, and have accepted, the patch.
Consider the extra $500 compensation for this unexpected loss of smug,
righteous indignation.)

~~~
jhardy54
Thanks for the bounty. Is this resolved when the patch is written and
available for anyone to include in their source tree, or when it's merged into
the Firefox tree?

(I want to clarify because I've had a patch open for 4 months that's received
no attention from maintainers.)

~~~
rsync
The bounty will be awarded (paid) when Joe Average user can download plain old
Firefox and use about:tabs, without other downloads or add-ons, etc.

~~~
jhardy54
Since my last patch (bugfix, one line) has been open for at least 4 months
without activity I'm not sure how feasible it would be to land a new feature
and have it releases in Firefox stable in ~3 months.

------
ajstiles
I built the "first tabbed browser", NetCaptor, back in 1997.
[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/meet-
th...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/meet-the-man-who-
invented-tabs)

My take - some of us leave tabs open way too long because we fear not being
able to get back to those sites again… it’s loss aversion. Tabs aren’t the
core problem per se, it’s recall. We need to solve the “I want to get back
here again” problem.

I primarily use Brave and effectively start fresh every day. I might get up to
20 open tabs at any given time, and I sometimes use tabs as a sort of Inbox
that needs to be cleared. But sometimes, it’s best to declare tab bankruptcy
and start over.

~~~
chris_st
Good point. I've lost track of the number of start-ups that proposed some kind
of "Search your browser history" functionality, which, to be honest, I've
wished for myself. But I don't know of any that have even made it to released-
product stage.

~~~
Reelin
Does Memex resemble what you were wishing for?
([https://github.com/WorldBrain/Memex/](https://github.com/WorldBrain/Memex/))

~~~
chris_st
Not really -- What I'd like would be something that doesn't require me to
annotate, in advance, what I want to find again. I often think, "I know I read
something about this a while back!" and then I try to think which website I'd
seen it on. The ones I've read about just watch your whole browsing history
and let you search that.

I also couldn't get it to work when I tried a while ago (which I imagine
they've fixed).

------
sevencolors
I never understood how folks end up with 20+ (100+ !?) tabs just hanging
around ALL the time. For me it's so much visual noise.

I can see it happening when you're in the midst of research or
troubleshooting. But when I'm done or have solved my issue I'll note in my PR
where i found solutions or add the useful pages to my bookmark service
(raindrop). Then close all the tabs!

~~~
growt
I'm one of those "tab-addicts". The problem is that I use Tabs for everything:
reading list, history _, bookmarks_. Right now I have 8 pinned tabs for email,
calendar, messengers and such things. Then I have a couple of interesting news
articles etc. that I left open to read later. I also left open some of my
work/research flows (so 3-5 tabs each that belong to the same project topic)
that I didn't really finish or was just to lazy to close.

~~~
navalsaini
About your pinned tabs. You could try making URL shortcuts with rewq.app . [
disclaimer: I made it for personal use ].

It would be nice to have feedback from others on improving it.

------
dredmorbius
Tabbed browsing: a lousy band-aid over poor browser document and state
management (2014):

...What I want is to maintain a list of current references, preferably with
some spatial context (tree-mode browsing is great for this) to what the
relationship is between pages in my browser session. I do not need is for
every last single page to be open at the same time, sucking down memory, CPU
cycles, and worse: playing videos and/or making noise.

That state-management is missing. Bookmarks aren't really it -- they're a
permanent quick-reference to stuff you want to go back to, and as with any
storage locker or closet, suffer from the clean-out problem: it's a goddamned
pain in the ass to go and sort through the stuff you've tossed in there and
clean out the junk.

Browser history isn't it either: it's too comprehensive, is insufficiently
contextualized, doesn't record relationships between pages (other than, maybe,
relative time). On mobile devices it's a chore to sort out where in your
history a given page was in the highly constrained display available. Site-
supplied titles are often absolutely worthless for finding content (though
some such as HN do this well).

There's a space between the comprehensive listing of everything you've
visited, and the highly organized catalog, that's missing in the browser
space. Effectively: the current workspace, with the papers and books with
which you're currently working open in front of you. I've been playing with
this stuff for decades and it's still a frustration....

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_browsing_a_lousy_bandaid_over_poor_browser/)

My present Firefox tab count is > 1550.

~~~
catchmeifyoucan
want to try amna?? It helps you break things down by task. I’d say it’s still
super early, but seems like the right balance of random browsing and
collecting items as part of a context.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23780781&ref=producthun...](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23780781&ref=producthunt)

~~~
dredmorbius
Interesting. Is there a demo / walkthrough?

OK, found & am reading [https://getamna.com/blog/post/customer-
research/](https://getamna.com/blog/post/customer-research/)

My preference would be CLI / terminal centric.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6bgowu/what_if...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6bgowu/what_if_the_web_was_filesystemaccessible/)

~~~
catchmeifyoucan
Hey - nice! Yup that was some user research we had done. Working on making the
website better as well.

Few more details here: getamna.com/demo

Interesting! Currently the solution is primarily a GUI based system using
Chromium for rendering. But the data is stored into a JSON file organized a
group of tasks with website urls. I haven't explored too much around a CLI
before. I know that org-mode is super popular, but I've never played with it
much.

~~~
dredmorbius
Putting the browser (and other tools) inside a workflow box seems long
overdue. That alone is genius. It's a key principle I've been leaning toward
as well, though with a somewhat different target as to projects and scale.

------
kodablah
I made a browser to deal with this [0]. I've basically abandoned work on it,
but I still use it as my daily driver (granted I don't push my fresh builds up
as much as I used to and there are a couple of bugs).

It provides me such a huge benefit because I just swipe my hand to destroy
dozens of browser tabs. And all the while I can see the name, have them
hierarchical, change their groups, etc. I go on deep GitHub or Wikipedia dives
and close or collapse that entire line of thought so easily. Tabs are
essentially mind maps. I wish a larger vendor with real time/money would
invest in a similar many-tab model. The concept is of course directly taken
from the tree-style tab extension in FF, but even that extension has suffered
since the move off of XUL, and I can't easily close a ton of tabs just by
dragging over the close buttons anymore (among other things).

0 - [https://cretz.github.io/doogie/](https://cretz.github.io/doogie/)

------
conductor
How do people manage to manage hundreds or even thousands of open tabs? And
most importantly, why? Are they using tabs instead of bookmarks?

Usually I have no more than ten. Even when searching/researching something it
doesn't get more than twenty - open all the interesting search results on the
first search page, usually that's enough to find whatever I'm looking for. If
not, tabs are being closed one by one or are being bookmarked with appropriate
tags. Repeat for the next page of search results.

~~~
meowface
Because my browser is like my brain and my life: disorganized and full of
loose threads.

I imagine there's likely a correlation with ADHD, as well.

------
kevincox
Tabs were a mistake. They were a hack to work around window managers that
lacked enough features and now we have a "window manager" inside of a window
manager. Probably most apps have their own tab interface which works
differently from every other app. We should rethink the design, improve the
window managers, then remove tabs.

I don't think it will ever happen, but it would be nice.

~~~
renewiltord
There was a Compiz extension that permitted window tabbing like this. I did
not enjoy its use. I attempted to use it to create "environments". It was less
effective than using workspaces because workspaces allowed full windowing.

~~~
kevincox
KWin does (did?) this as well. I think the biggest problem is that if you open
a new "window" it doesn't know that you want it to show as a new tab on the
same window. I think that this is largely because X doesn't actually know
which window opened the new window.

I used the KWin tabs a fair amount, but they didn't fill the same use case as
browser tabs. It would be interesting to see this implemented, of course you
would also need to seriously patch the browser.

~~~
renewiltord
It might have been KWin and I misremembered.

------
userbinator
I'm probably in the minority because I never use tabs much ---- I prefer
multiple separate (overlapping) windows that I can size and arrange as
desired, because I often use the information from multiple sites
simultaneously. I've seen a lot of others who flip back and forth between two
tabs many times, trying to compare them, and have never thought they could
open two windows and put them next to each other. Of course, I've been using
browsers before they had tabs, so it could be experience, but I wonder if the
current "single content" model has severely degraded users' ability to compare
and contrast different sources of information.

~~~
kroltan
I found myself using separate windows more during my time with a heavily
customized Manjaro install, where I used a tiling window manager and had lots
of ways of quickly adjusting my window layout with minimal extra information
needed.

I think managing windows in say... Windows is terrible (even if macOS manages
to be even worse). There are a few third-party applications to sort of emulate
tiling WMs, but they're very clunky and software likes to act "surprised"
about it and often have weird behaviours. That, and the requirement of window
chrome.

That being said, for your specific example of flipping through two tabs, I
still find that very useful as a visual diff: get both tabs on the same scroll
position and spam Ctrl+Tab and your brain will quickly generate a diff between
both. The ideal solution would be actual universal diffing tools, but that's
far-fetched.

~~~
Karawebnetwork
> I think managing windows in say... Windows is terrible

Have you tried Microsoft's FancyZones? I find it works well enough to be worth
installing on all my windows computers.

[https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/wiki/FancyZones-
Overv...](https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/wiki/FancyZones-Overview)

~~~
kroltan
Yes, though I prefer [http://windowgrid.net/](http://windowgrid.net/) since I
always keep relayouting windows around, at least when I tried, FZ had me going
out of my way to change layouts a little bit.

------
catchmeifyoucan
I like that the author mentioned “goal-oriented”. Perhaps intent is another
way to phrase it. There are few websites we visit with intent, and others are
for just “browsing”.

I’ve been working on Amna as a way to help with intent driven work. Instead of
opening a frenzy of tabs, it makes you write what you’re working on first, and
then provides you a browser or multiple browsers to help you. It’s cool
because when you have to get back to something, you just click on a task, and
everything comes back. E.g right now I’m working on editing a website and
sending out a newsletter, those are two completely separate items, and when
looked at individually, they only have like 4 tabs each.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23780781&ref=producthun...](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23780781&ref=producthunt)

------
bennyp101
For some reason once the tab list reaches the other side of the monitor it
makes me feel uneasy, so I close down any tabs that I don't need open.

I've never found the need to have more than 8 or so tabs open really - and if
I want to compare things, then I just open another browser window and pop it
next to it, or on a different monitor.

I'm sure there are very good reason for people that have 50+ tabs open -
everyones brain works differently after all - but it makes my brain itch!

~~~
II2II
My uneasiness comes from a realization that too many tabs means that I am not
prioritizing tasks. Sure enough, a quick review of the tabs results in most of
them being closed since what felt important at the moment was not important in
retrospect.

As for people who have 50+ tabs open, I am left wondering if they are going
about things in an effective manner. At least in Firefox, it is easy to select
a bunch of tabs and bookmark them for future reference. It is also easy to
load up all of those bookmarks at once when needed. It is a lot easier to deal
with the eight tabs from Project A and the dozen tabs from Project B
independently than it is to deal with all twenty at once. (Granted, this could
be made easier. The big drawback with bookmarks is that they are a snapshot in
time, rather than the reflection of a dynamic project.)

------
teekert
I keep my tabs under control and always set FF to start with a fresh session
so I loose all tabs every day. Works for me.

The new FF for android though forces a new tab to get to my favorite websites
and does not allow for a clean session after close, so I now have 47 open,
mostly the same 4 websites :s

~~~
kevincox
Currently there is a "clear private data on quit" which you can use. Just
uncheck everything but tabs. You have to manually select "Quit" from the menu
to trigger it.

Beta versions have the option to close tabs after a set inactivity time which
I can't wait to land.

~~~
teekert
Thanx for the tips but I can't wait until hitting the address bar just gives
me an overview of my favorite sites again. I don't need any new tabs, I only
used them to store thing for later (as in next) reading.

------
Arkdy
Their links are dead now, but Tangram browser (2015)* was an Android browser
that tried to break up researching on the web into three distinct UI tabs.

1\. Seek: If you give it a search term it'll display the results as list of
links

2\. Sort: Any links or images you click on while in _Web_ goes into a list
called the Stack. I think it acts like your working memory in the same way
that a traditional window of tabs might, and the act of sending links to the
stack may be related to the "seeking circuit".

Links in the stack can be clicked on to navigate to, or swiped right to be
sent to the _Store_ section.

3\. Store: Links here are saved from the stack as you use the app, and you can
create folders.

* [https://imgur.com/gallery/AwBTxlZ](https://imgur.com/gallery/AwBTxlZ) Here's an imgur post I just made with screenshots of the walk-through and a gif of usage. I don't use it anymore because it's been unsupported for years so I'm assuming that it's not exactly secure, but I loved the idea.

------
ksec
I hope Mac Safari Teams gets to read the link and HN's comments, they ignore
the power users and try to dump down Mac Safari to iOS.

With Safari 14, Fav icon is now on by default, you would think this is great,
except the Tab now shrinks to Icon size once you have a dozen or more. Instead
of the old Fav Icon + Text Description in the Tab. i.e How Firefox behaves.

They also got rid of Top Site, and instead it is now an iOS Safari design like
Start Page. You can tell by their much narrower design compared to your
widescreen Mac.

One way to save memory if you have a few dozens or hundreds of Tabs, is to
unload them by quitting Safari and Start again with previous session. This way
all the Tabs are unloaded by default, they are there sitting idle. Basically
just a list of Tabs. ( This also works on Chrome and Firefox )

But if you somehow finger swipe or accidentally press the Show Tab Overview,
Safari will reload _every_ single tab you have in the background just to
create a Thumbnails for your Tab. If you have 1600 Tabs like some here, you
will quickly run out of memory and start paging hundreds of GBs of data to
your SSD. Basically shortening your SSD's life span.

And to those questioning why the large number of Tabs. I mean on one hand HN
keeps pushing everything should be SaaS and Web _Apps_. Project Planning,
Email, Social Media.. etc. On the other you have Research Notes, subject I
need to research that instantly open a dozen tabs or Amazon / Online Shopping.
Or simple daily RSS where I just Command Click all the news item I want to
read. You also have sessions you want to read but you dont have the time right
now.

All we really need is a Show All Tab Page as a list instead of Thumbnails once
Tab number goes over certain number, with a Search Field at the top that
hopefully search the Title and some Meta Data. I dont want to kill my 2015
MacBook Pro. It may be the last MacBook Pro with a decent keyboard judging by
the way things are going.

------
dangom
Interesting that nobody mentioned not using tabs at all. I adapted the
chrome.css of my firefox to hide tabs altogether, so I can get more screen
real state. That paired with Vimium allows me to hit T to get a list of all
open tabs, which I can then incrementally search. If I want to open a link
from history, I hit O instead.

~~~
bbbobbb
How do you deal with websites that hijack your vimium shortcuts (gmail.. or
event where it does not work - new tab blank page..)

~~~
dangom
You can deactivate it for sites where it interferes with your workflow. I've
become used to switching tabs when it doesn't work, or hitting Cmd+L and
searching from the address bar.

To be precise, I use a combination of Ctrl+tab, Cmd+L, T and O, in that order
of frequency. I don't mind repeated tabs, so sometimes I'll just do a web
search for whatever item I wanted again.

------
Ayesh
Firefox containers, paired with Simple Tab Groups helped me to fix this.

I work on multiple projects and it's common to have multiple Github and alike
issues, and other pages open. With Simple Tab Groups, you can select to group
and only show tabs that belong to just one group.

It's easy to move tabs between groups. When the tab group is switched, tabs
from the other group are offloaded from memory, effectively making them
bookmarks.

Pinned tabs (webmail client, a note taking app, and music player in my case)
are shown in all tab groups.

I know it helped a lot, because I use Chrome on my Android, and I always have
":D" in my tab button because I have more than 100 tabs open.

------
bityard
For anyone else who considered Panorama to be their favorite feature of
Firefox before they killed it, the closest replacement for it I've found so
far is [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tiled-tab-
gro...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tiled-tab-groups/).
It's not at all perfect from a UI standpoint, but it hasn't lost my tabs or
crashed the browser yet.

------
ezluckyfree
Briefly I was looking for an addon that completely disabled tabs, and removed
the tab bar. Every action that would normally open a new tab would instead
open a new window.

Since I use a tiling WM, the idea was that this would make it easier to
navigate through my tabs, and also keep my attention from branching so often.
If I had something that I found useful enough to keep around, I can move it to
another virtual desktop.

Unfortunately, I never found such an addon, and I'm still not set on that
workflow in general.

~~~
mac01021
I use a Chrome extension called "New Tab, New Window".

It doesn't reclaim the screen real estate occupied by the tab bar, but it has
the behavior you want.

~~~
ezluckyfree
oh, cool. thanks!

------
fmajid
When I am working on a project, e.g. researching a laptop purchase, I will
open a new window to act as a container for all those research-related tabs,
then when I am done the entire window can be closed.

Vivaldi has a notion of tab-within-tabs, but the UI is very subtle and the
tabs^2 very small and fiddly to reach with a mouse, thereby violating Fitt's
Law.

~~~
wlesieutre
Firefox used to let you have multiple sets of tabs within one window and cycle
between them, completely hiding the inactive ones. Effectively it felt like
you had several browser windows within the one window, and picked which window
was active.

Looks like this started way back in Firefox 4, and the UI was a bit all over
the place, but I liked using it (mainly by keyboard shortcut):

[https://www.computerworld.com/article/2514927/firefox-4-beta...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2514927/firefox-4-beta-4-opens-
a-new-panorama.html)

~~~
bityard
Panorama was a firefox killer feature for me. So slick, so useful.

I _really_ enjoyed the ability to switch between different sets of tabs
depending on which project I was focusing on at the moment. The Panorama UI
made it quick, simple, and painless to do. It seems like most users simply use
multiple browser windows, but I've honestly never been able to figure out how
that works effectively when you're juggling multiple projects at once: when
I'm not working on a particular project, I want it completely gone and
(safely) hidden away so that it doesn't distract from my current project.

And then of course Firefox killed the Panorama feature. With the
rationalization that no one used the feature and that it would be better
implemented as an extension. Except that the extension went unmaintained after
a few months. And then later, Firefox broke the APIs that made Panorama
possible. The net result being that in the past few years, my productivity in
the browser plummeted.

There are various tab management addons for Firefox but almost all of them
have the following downsides:

* geared towards manually saving and restoring tabs (I don't want manual anything, I just want to switch between groups of tabs with a couple of clicks) * not actively maintained * buggy (as in, loses tabs for useful content that in some cases took a long time to find)

So far the one I've had the most luck with recently is Tiled Tab Groups
([https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tiled-tab-
gro...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tiled-tab-groups/)). I
don't use the UI for it, though, unless I'm creating a new group. I just click
on the icon in the toolbar and select the group I want. It's still on
probation as far as I'm concerned but it hasn't crashed or lost tabs on me
yet.

------
unabst
+1 for Cluster. I settled for OneTab like many, until it deleted all my tabs.
Happened to many people, and is fatal. Then I used Session Buddy. Only wished
it had drag and drop, which is when I found Cluster. Drag and drop is
important for when you branch out from the group and for weeding and
consolidating tabs. Cluster works great with a big screen too which is what I
have.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cluster-window-
tab...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cluster-window-tab-
manage/aadahadfdmiibmdhfmpbeeebejmjnkef?hl=en)

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/session-
buddy/edac...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/session-
buddy/edacconmaakjimmfgnblocblbcdcpbko?hl=en)

------
code_duck
It baffles me to hear how many people use tabs - some vast amount open at
once. I open and close pages as I read them, and only have what's relevant to
me open at any time. To me this is what Reading List and bookmarks are for.

------
jjice
I've also been known to have an absurd amount of tabs across multiple browser
windows. Upgrading to a new machine with quite a bit more RAM didn't help
either. About once a day, I'll go through, and without looking, close all my
browser windows. If I try to go through and choose which tabs to close
individually, I get a hoarder mentality where I can find the use in
everything. "Actually, maybe I do want to read that article about raising your
own livestock", I'd think to myself knowing full well I live in a city.

Worse case scenario, I close something that will take 15 seconds to get back
to when I realize I need it.

------
ImaCake
A solution that seems to work for me is keep notes instead. If I am interested
in something I stick a link and some brief notes in a markdown document and
make sure to include as many descriptive words as possible. That way I can
grep my notes folder later to look for the note I made.

For home I keep a separate file per day. For work I have a monolithic
"general_notes.md" which I add stuff to sequentially. Generally work notes
need to be found quickly, so one file makes sense. For home I am not so time
pressured, so grepping through multiple files is an acceptable solution.

------
bntyhntr
I've settled on vertical tabs, and use an extension that limits it to the
number that fit on my screen without scrolling, which is around 30.

I also no longer use bookmarks. I use the browser's autocomplete of sites I've
been to before, and failing that either remember the complete url or give up.

I used to do a lot of bookmarking and a lot of tabs but I found neither really
added value for me. If I don't remember the site, I probably don't need to be
there.

That said, I don't try to really convince others to do the same (except
vertical tabs) cuz I recognize not everyone will find the same value I do in
it.

------
k__
I always close my tabs as quickly as possible. "Tabs Zero" so to speak.

I would value a better reopen closed tab feature. Going further back and
allowing me specify which closed tab I want back.

~~~
kevincox
Isn't this just browser history? I close tabs very aggressively (usually
hovering around Tabs Zero if you exclude the always open (like calendar and
messaging apps) and regularly fish things out of my history.

~~~
renewiltord
Browser history currently does not preserve local history. All modern
browsers, on the other hand, will preserve history for the tab when you "undo
close".

To observe difference, do the following:

\- Go to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24518507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24518507)
, click 'parent', close tab, undo close tab, hit back. Where are you?

\- Load the page that was the 'parent', hit back. Where are you?

Each tab is a history tree. The history page, on the other hand, is a
linearized chronological list. They are non-equivalent.

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kirubakaran
Wouldn't be great to save all the open tabs, and not only restore them (there
are tons of browser extensions that do that), but also treat them as a
collection to share, restore in a different computer etc? I built that feature
into Histre : [https://histre.com/features/save-restore-
tabs/](https://histre.com/features/save-restore-tabs/) if you're interested.

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dilpreet_singh
I really appreciate the author's take on the issue.

Internet is such an integral part of our lives, and so many people's computer
usage is all about just using a browser. Which is why it's interesting that
even after about 25 years of the first browser, we have almost the same
interface to accessing the INTERNET. And it definitely can be made better!

We should think about solving this problem

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colordrops
How about "history as a service"? Your history is encrypted and synced
remotely. Every page/tab you've got open, you can add tags and notes. So even
if you close everything, you should be able to find what you visited before
based on your custom annotations, even if it was years ago. Then, no fear of
closing all the tabs.

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beaker52
I've noticed that as I've gotten older my tab behaviour has changed. When I
was younger, I used to operate an extension that'd kill tabs I hadn't accessed
in the last hour. Chrome doesn't really give you the same control over tabs.
I've tried firefox but it's noticeably slower in comparison.

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zyxzevn
The many open tabs are related to states between:

1\. bookmarking,

2\. will look at it any minute/day now.

3\. need to read/watch further when I got time.

4\. page no longer available on site.

5\. music to play in the background.

So what a browser mainly needs a a way of bookmarking that also stores some of
the state of the page. Like position on page, selection, video/audio-position,
saved to local cache.

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forgotmypw17
This is why I set my browser to vertical tabs, which makes much more sense,
IMO, especially given today's widescreen trend.

I can fit up to about 50 tabs per window before they scroll, which is usually
more than enough, and I can still read their text.

And all I had to do to achieve this was type `:set tabs.position right`...

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dzhiurgis
Latest safari 14 screwed up tabs. Now when you’ve got lots and icons enabled
the little text snippet disappears so you’ve got aesthetically looking tab
icon. Useless! Must be the worst browser tab experience, especially on iOS.

If there’s one company that can unfuck browsers its ironically Microsoft...

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Const-me
I close them often, middle-click on the header or Ctrl+W. I also miss opera's
hotkey to close all tabs except the active one.

When I'm doing some research where I need lots of them at the same time, I use
OneNote or sometimes Word to keep the links, adding a line or 2 of text about
that link.

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sbmthakur
I have had around 200 tabs opened in my mobile. This was till I realized that
this is just FOMO and is due to lack of focus. I created a strict there should
be no more than 5 tabs in the browser at the end of each week. Things have
been much better since then.

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cassepipe
Doesn't Firefox searches through open tabs while you type in the (indeed)
awesome bar ? I don't see where the problem is really. Plus the session
manager extensions I have tried are not "stiff", they work well.

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kasperset
Although not a solution for tab problem, apps like Historyhound may help to
some extent getting over that losing all the information fear.

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csours
I don't have a big problem with browser tabs, but I have 60 tabs open in
Notepad++ and I feel like I'm losing my goddamn mind.

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weirdmn
(am taking BASB course) would be great if all my open tabs could be bucketed
into the PARA framework somehow...

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onion-soup
Chrome exists over a decade yet they still haven't figured out how ctrl+Tab
should work.

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terrywang
Have been having the same problem but now getting less painful as a quick
TL;DR style (many articles start to adopt starting with a TL;DR at the top)
read (to get the core ideas) and save useful ones with Diigo (replacing
del.icio.us? to achieve read it later) worked well, effectively reduced FOMO.

> NOTE: Session Buddy for Chrome is handy when suffering from power loss (MBP
> hang, Linux workstation power cord got kicked off, etc.).

