
Show HN: Freezetab – What browser bookmarks should've been - ksbrooksjr
https://freezetab.com/
======
cookingrobot
This looks great.

One of my complaints with bookmarks is that I often browse though Craigslist
and make favorites of things I'm thinking of buying. Those pages have an
extremely short life before they expire, and so I end up with collections of
dead links. I'd love it to capture a screenshot or some kind of permanent
archive when I make a favorite. I only save a few a week, so disk space isn't
an issue at all.

------
sova
Yo this is really excellent, it'd be cool to share collections with friends
doing similar research.

Does it save the scrollTop position in the extension so that one ends up at
the same spot on the page?

Also, have you ever read that oldschool CS paper on Breadcrumbs and how people
envisioned that the future of web surfing would be long trails/breadcrumbs
you'd follow that other people forged ahead on the web-of-links?

~~~
ksbrooksjr
I'm glad you like it! I didn't even think about saving the scroll position,
that's actually a really good idea. The paper you're referring to sounds a lot
like Vannevar Bush's concept of the "Memex", which was a precursor to modern
hyperlinks.

I do think that a huge opportunity has been missed by the major browser
vendors in relation to bookmarks. That area of technology has been pretty
stagnant throughout the history of the internet, which seems odd given the
fact that saving links is such a basic necessity.

~~~
sova
True words my friend. Glad you're remedying the situation. Trailblazing and
trail keeping

------
simple10
I've used OneTab[1] for years. It's indispensable. Freezetab looks even better
with more features.

[1] [https://www.one-tab.com/](https://www.one-tab.com/)

~~~
ksbrooksjr
Glad you like it! If you're a OneTab user I think you'll definitely enjoy
using it. Like you said there are more features, but it's also much faster. If
you have 1000 saved tabs, OneTab attempts to load all 1000 of them (and their
favicons) every time you open your tab list.

Freezetab uses an infinite scrolling mechanism that loads your tabs as you
scroll, so it's just as responsive when you have 1500 saved tabs as it is when
you have 15 saved tabs.

------
bobwaycott
Shiiit. Brilliant. I am the type who keeps windows of tabs upon windows of
tabs open forever, throughout a project or complicated task for weeks at a
time, specifically because I make windows the container of purpose, and hate
trying to deal with folders of bookmarks. This is fantastic.

Is it forever Chrome-only? Any chance of a Safari extension?

~~~
ksbrooksjr
That sounds like a pretty brutal workflow. Freezetab would be great for your
use case, so I'm glad you like it.

I definitely plan on expanding availability to Firefox and Opera in the short-
term (and eventually Edge), because porting Chrome extensions to those
platforms is pretty straight forward.

Safari on the other hand is a little bit more challenging. Most browsers
implement extensions as plain HTML, CSS, and Javscript — they're essentially
just websites. Safari requires developers to integrate native Swift and
Objective C code into extensions, which means I might have to do a partial
rewrite (and learn Swift or Obj C) to target Safari.

You also have to pay a 99 dollar annual fee to maintain a presence in the
Safari Extension Gallery, which is somewhat exorbitant for a free extension.
If users install the Safari extension directly from my website instead of the
extension gallery, then they'll miss out on auto updates.

~~~
vladsanchez
Great extension. I'm also notorious for keeping tens of windows open only to
manage my tabs. FreezeTab would be a life/time saver.

I just emailed asking for Opera support. I recommend you create an email-list
for alerting about updates and supported versions.

Do you mind elaborating about the business model around browser-extension
building? In your case, is it merely for advertising your software development
skills or is there anything else behind it?

Thanks for FreezeTab. ;-)

~~~
ksbrooksjr
I'm glad you like it Vlad. :)

I saw your email, and I'll personally send you an email when an Opera version
is available. Given that Opera is just a fork of Chromium, you can actually
install most Chrome extensions directly from the Chrome Webstore[1], although
that's just a temporary fix. I plan on fully supporting Opera in the near
future.

As to the business model, I certainly considered monetization while building
the product, but my initial concern was just solving my own problem and
getting Freezetab into the hands of users. Given how successful the launch was
(it's the #1 product on Producthunt today[2]) I'm actively exploring
monetization strategies.

Given how many requests there are for cross-platform availability, I think
I'll set up an email list to notify everyone when it's available for Firefox
and Opera. I'll update this thread accordingly.

[1] [http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-install-google-chrome-
ex...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-install-google-chrome-extensions-
in-opera-browser/)

[2]
[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/freezetab](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/freezetab)

------
ilaksh
Are they bookmarks or organizing tabs that are actually open but better
organized?

Because tabs and bookmarks are not the same things. Tabs may have programs
running in them.

~~~
ksbrooksjr
Freezetab saves a tab's url, title, favicon, and the date and time the tab was
saved. When you reopen a tab, the extension opens a new tab and navigates to
the saved url. The extension does not actually create bookmarks, nor does it
save the content of a website. All of your data is stored via chrome's local
storage api.

I used the words bookmark and tab on the landing page, because they are
familiar words that provide a reference point for people trying to quickly
grasp what the extension does (especially non-technical people). There's
always a tradeoff between precision and concision when crafting marketing
materials, but I hope most people are able to understand the project's basic
functionality.

------
great_psy
Even the regular bookmarks I have, I barely visit them ever again.

The only things I re-visit are reference websites, which I could easily find
with a quick search.

I really do not see why I would want to save 1000+ tabs, at that point I might
as well just search through my browsing history.

~~~
ksbrooksjr
Before creating this extension I often faced the same problem. I would rarely
return to my old bookmarks, and part of the issue was that there wasn't an
easy way to sift through them.

I added some features to help people keep their saved links organized, so that
it would be easier to parse them at a later date. You can of course just
search through your browsing history, but all of that data is lost whenever
you clear your history.

Even if you do refrain from clearing your browsing data, there aren't many
options for organizing your browsing history. What if you want to view every
link you've ever saved from Ycombinator? What if you want to find every link
you've ever saved on a certain day of the month? Also, what if you want more
control over which tabs are saved? Have you ever had so many tabs open that
Chrome no longer displays their titles, making it extremely difficult to find
the specific tabs you want to save?

These are the sort of problem sets that I set out to solve. Hopefully there
are some power users here who are able to derive some value from it.

Give it a try, it's free.

------
johnmw
This doesn't seem to integrate with my existing bookmarks?

Have I done something wrong, or is this not possible right now? If not, are
there any plans to do this in the future - any help organising my existing
pile of bookmarks would be awesome.

~~~
ksbrooksjr
Unfortunately there's nothing wrong on your end, I haven't implemented that
feature just yet. I have a long list of planned feature additions, and
bookmark importing/exporting is at the top of the list. Thank you for the
feedback, I appreciate it!

------
theonething
Awesome, switching over from OneTab.

Some things that would make it more awesome:

    
    
      - detect duplicates
      - ability to sync with a cloud service, e.g. Google bookmarks

~~~
ksbrooksjr
Thanks for making the switch. Duplicate detection is a planned feature, and
I'll definitely work on adding it to the next iteration of Freezetab.

Cloud syncing is certainly on my radar, but slightly more difficult. If
Freezetab synced the saved links with Google Bookmarks it would lose all the
metadata associated with each link. Freezetab assigns each saved link a unique
ID for example — bookmarks don't allot any extra storage for this sort of
custom metadata. I do plan on building a server side implementation of
Freezetab to handle syncing if the extension gains enough traction.

------
phaed
Nice, left you a rating. This just replaced TabOutliner for me. Would love a
feature:

Restore pinned status to tabs.

~~~
ksbrooksjr
Thanks for trying Freezetab and leaving a review, I appreciate it. Restoring
pinned status is a great idea. I've added that feature to the product roadmap
and plan on implementing it soon.

------
mariocarvalho
Fantastic! Started using it, just now.

One request :)

\- Can you do some backup/restore system?

------
acalderaro
This is so cool!

I added it to my bookmarks folder ;)

~~~
ksbrooksjr
Hopefully you won't be using bookmarks much longer :)

