
Open tabs are cognitive spaces - spython
https://rybakov.com/blog/open_tabs_are_cognitive_spaces/
======
workona
We couldn't agree more, Michail. So much so that we founded a company (Workona
Inc.) and built pretty much exactly what you've described.

Workona's extension turns your browser windows into "smart windows"
(workspaces) that remember the tabs you open in them. This allows you to shut
a project and pick up right where you left off later.

Your workspaces will help you split up your 477 open tabs into the 70
projects, topics and ideas you talked about. Workona also lets you "switch to
these groups in your workflow" seamlessly so you can focus on one thing at a
time. Soon workspaces will be sharable and even have URLs that can be used to
access them, which will open the set of tabs in their own window. To ensure
workspaces open quickly, we prevent the tabs from loading the content until
you click on them.

We haven't officially launched yet, but we recently opened up the beta if you
want to try it out (only Chrome for now, but support for Firefox coming soon).
We'd love to hear your thoughts: [https://workona.com](https://workona.com)

~~~
hyperpape
This is an awesome idea, I just installed and tried it out. A few things jump
out at me: if you have fifty tabs open, the first use experience is a little
painful--you want to be able to create workspaces and quickly file things
away, but it's a very slow process. Opening a workspace pops you into a new
view, and it's not immediately obvious what to do from there.

I get that the first use may not be the case you're optimizing for, but it was
a bit frustrating.

~~~
workona
Glad you like it! You’re right that onboarding can be tough for users with
lots of tabs. We're working on a few things that will make it easier.

The intended initial set up flow is: \- Create a workspace (+ button next to
the word “Workspaces”) \- Switch to the window with all your unsorted tabs \-
Drag and drop the tabs into your workspaces (multi-select coming soon)

Things get much easier once you’re set up. Workspaces are essentially smart
browser windows, so you can just open a new (unsaved) window and browse like
you normally do. If at any point you decide you want to save the window as a
workspace, you simply click on our icon and give it a name.

------
ken
I agree with the premise, but I think that I actually want something closer to
the opposite. >95% of the things I look up are dead ends. Because these
externalized cognitive spaces have weight and complexity, I often want to just
wipe them out completely and start over.

I've turned my Safari "remove history items" preference to a short interval,
specifically to minimize the cognitive overload that URL completion will have.

(I was disappointed to learn that Firefox removed the history expiry setting
entirely. All of the forum questions asking for it are met with answers like
"We use an efficient database now, so you don't need to set an expiration
time!" Cool, but the implementation architecture had nothing to do with why
that was a useful feature.)

I also use private browsing a _lot_. Need to check a quick fact on Wikipedia,
that isn't directly related to my main work? Private browsing window. Some
people are obsessive about keeping their Git history clean. I'm obsessive
about keeping my browser history clean. In a sense, my browser history _is_
the workspace imagined here, only with a less efficient UI.

Instead of a separate concept of "private browsing", though, I would love it
if I could option-click a close button (on a window or tab) and have it erase
all history/cookies that were generated by it. That would make history
curation much easier.

------
hawktheslayer
For Chrome I like to use the "Bookmark all tabs" option (Ctrl-Shift-D). When I
am in the middle of researching a topic but want to shift gears, I save
bookmarks to a new subfolder in my "Working Tabs" folder. Then I delete all
tabs. That way (1) I know I can restore to this state if I need to, (2) I keep
separate trains of thought from getting muddled, and (3) I can keep a
relatively Zen workspace.

------
horeans
Vivaldi literally does everything this article wants. Without addons or
extensions. Also does what [https://workona.com](https://workona.com) does.
See: [https://vivaldi.com/features/](https://vivaldi.com/features/).

~~~
romwell
And before that, Opera has had tab stacking and sessions saving for years.

Don't remember if they were shared, and there's no way to test now that the
cloud for version 12 and earlier has gone offline.

(Moral of the story: don't rely on clouds for things you want to have in five
years)

------
hyperdeficit
I really like this idea. I use Pocket pretty heavily for bookmarking, but
there has been something off about it and nearly any other solution that I
used that I couldn't quite pinpoint. I think this is part of the issue. I save
a set of bookmarks on a topic over a period of time, but it isn't easy to get
access to all of those bookmarks again. Searching doesn't quite accomplish the
goal because I might have been looking into a similar topic months ago, but a
search will return results from both "mental sessions" together and I have to
separate them myself.

I have tried saving all of my bookmarks also, but then I usually have to
remove my pinned tabs that are part of my overall workflow and not part of the
mental session.

------
silencestones
If you're using Qutebrowser you can save your sessions and name them whatever
you want, switch between them, and come back to them later if needed. That's
your immutable tabs collection.

------
gkya
Tabs are ephemeral. I just lost all my tabs after restarting Firefox to free
up some memory, even though I set it up to restore them:
[https://www.gkayaalp.com/blog/20180326_quitting-
firefox.html](https://www.gkayaalp.com/blog/20180326_quitting-firefox.html).
Be careful using them. This is probably the weirdest HN post that gave me
glistening eyes...

~~~
spython
If you didn't restart Firefox again there should be a backup of opened tabs
saved in your profile folder!

~~~
gkya
I'll try, thanks, but I did restart it again... I was able to recollect some
of the tabs via remembering them and searching through recent feeds and
emails. Some importand to-be-read stuff are gone though.

------
rhn_mk1
As a stepgap for Firefox, I found that TabMarks fills that purpose. It keeps
working spaces (windows) synced with tab folders.

There's one mismatch though - closing a window clears a space. To save it for
later, I switch to an empty workspace first.

------
arbie
This is a fantastic idea. I use Firefox containers for this purpose, but they
do not utilize Firefox Sync, and so the grouping is limited to a single
device.

~~~
spython
Do you mean the Firefox multi-account containers? Wouldn't that just add some
coloured bar on the tabs (and separate logins etc) without hiding the
currently unused tabs?

~~~
deltaprotocol
The UX/UI is very poor in my experience, since I'm a heavy user of Firefox
Containers, know about the feature, need it, and never use it, but if you
click the Containers icon and have some container tabs active, it will display
a right arrow indicating there are more actions available where you can hide
the tabs of a specific Container group so that you can unclutter the browser
and access them later.

------
nerdcity
My open bar tab agrees.

