

Need a browser with one Tab - bhoomit
http://bhoomitv.tumblr.com/post/49685320064/need-a-browser-with-only-one-tab-or-may-be-two

======
smacktoward
You might want to sit down for this. Are you sitting down? Good.

The browser you want is Internet Explorer.

(I know, right? But I'm serious!)

IE lets you turn off tabbed browsing completely with a simple settings change.
The following steps are how you do it in Windows 7/IE 10, they may vary
slightly for other versions of Windows or IE.

1) Go to Control Panel > Internet Options.

2) Go to the "General" tab.

3) Click the button labeled "Tabs".

4) In the dialog box that pops up, titled "Tabbed Browsing Settings," un-check
the box labeled "Enable Tabbed Browsing."

5) Click "OK."

That's it, you now have your 1998-style tabless browser! Enjoy.

 _But smacktoward, I'm not on Windows! What do I do for a tabless browser on
other platforms?_

Despair, mostly. You can turn off most tabbed-browsing features in Firefox (go
to Options > Tabs and un-check everything), but all that does is suppress
things like new windows opening in new tabs; you can still manually open new
tabs if you want to. AFAIK Chrome has no way to turn off or suppress tabbed
browsing at all.

But come on, you're looking for a real Clinton-era browsing experience! Chrome
didn't even exist back then, and nobody used Macs. So spin up a Windows VM,
un-tabify IE, pop in a Third Eye Blind CD and go to town.

~~~
dmix
This comment combines useful information AND witty humor. Reddit could learn
from this.

~~~
smacktoward
Thanks! If you enjoyed this comment be sure to check out my upcoming book,
_Smells Like Tweak Spirit: The Grunge-Rock Guide To Browser Configuration
Settings._

~~~
mailo
Hahaha, you made my day mate :)

------
thristian
With Firefox's tab-groups, the fact it doesn't load tabs at startup until you
switch to them, and the TreeStyleTabs extension I can easily and efficiently
have over a hundred tabs "open" and everything still stays fast and efficient
and uncluttered.

Basically, I never use bookmarks anymore - when I'm researching some topic, I
do a bunch of searches, open a bunch of interesting results, and when I need
to task-switch to some other topic I shuffle them all off to a tab-group, name
it, and come back to it weeks or months later.

Another good application is having a tab-group per project - I can have a
collection of tabs with API docs, SQL docs, specifications and such, and stash
all that state and restore it almost instantly. As added benefit, since
Firefox's AwesomeBar will prefer to complete from the names and URLs of open
tabs, an easy way to switch to, say, the "CREATE TABLE" docs when I have a
dozen identically-iconned tabs open is to just say Ctrl-T, "CREATE T", Down,
Enter.

~~~
fmoralesc
I do the same. Tab groups in Firefox effectively solve the problem of having
too many tabs, IMHO.

------
jhacks
I personally experience this problem. However, I "solve" it by opening up a
few windows. I use specific windows for specific content. So, window #1 is
random articles I set aside to read, #2 is work-related research, and so on.
It's still not ideal, but better than nothing. I think the issue is that there
is only one convenient way to organize open documents -> VERTICALLY. It's just
much easier to scan and scroll through (and can't get the issue where the tabs
are quickly indiscernible due to lack of space).

Ideal solution (IMO) is multiple browser windows horizontally and tabbed
content within each vertically.

~~~
projectdelphai
Rather than multiple windows, I prefer the tab groups feature from firefox.
Keeps all my tabs in one window but keeps the other groups isolated and away.

~~~
jhacks
I'll have to see if chrome has a similar feature.

~~~
Orva
It doesn't have one that works as well as Firefox tab groups and will never
have because of AddOn permissions/APIs.

------
nemo1618
If you actually need a browser with just one tab, try surf:
<http://surf.suckless.org/>

~~~
qu4z-2
I will second this recommendation. I'm a big surf fanboy.

Not only does it force me to focus a bit more, but in my experience it loads
pages significantly faster than Chrome or Firefox. Which I wouldn't have
thought possible, but there you go.

Also, make sure you use a recent version if you need the Web Inspector.

------
calhoun137
Dondrey's Law: The number of tabs a programmer has open is proportional to how
stressed out they are.

------
prawn
A friend recommended I try The Great Suspender* (Chrome extension) for dealing
with tab overload. I tried it and then disabled it - just didn't seem to work
for me for whatever reason. Might be of use to others though.

My current method is to split tabs across various windows. I have 61 tabs open
across eight windows (general, project, travel research, accounting, time
tracking, articles, etc). It was 80+ last night but I made an effort to cull a
few.

Sometimes I use tabs like bookmarks, storing things for later. Articles to
read, Wikipedia pages I want to explore, music mixes I plan to download or
stream, something I will buy when I can be bothered remembering the password
for that store account, etc. It's quite pathetic really.

* [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspende...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspender/klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg)

------
nikcub
I always have 2-5 windows open with 5-30 tabs in each. This is an interface
problem that needs to be solved, nobody really needs that many tabs open. It
becomes ridiculous when you don't want to update your browser incase you lose
all your tabs.

I noticed that I am really using tabs as a form of nascent bookmarking. Each
window is a group or project and serves as a reading list, and then each tab
is an item to read.

With option + click it is easy to add items to the reading stack that you can
go back to later.

This could all be replaced with a simple plugin that manages these stacks in a
sidebar. You could then go back to using only a single window and the tabs as
collections.

Bookmarks are too permanent, while tabs are too temporary - browsers need
something in between that is a way of arranging what to read next.

~~~
3JPLW
I think the real issue is that back and forward _do not work._

They destroy state. They lose their place on the page. They're still not
immediate. They've broken server sessions so often that I have (as most have,
I imagine) conditioned myself to completely avoid using them.

Tabs were invaluable in the days of slow connections. But new pages load
pretty fast these days. The problem is getting back to the original page is
fraught with trouble.

------
coenhyde
What you need is Tab Wrangler. It's an extension for Chrome. It will close
inactive tabs for you. This means:

\- Tabs you don't care about will get closed. Even ones you think you care
about but you don't really. If you cared you would have access the tab
recently.

\- Tabs you do care about you will action appropriately. Either by finishing
the task or by putting it into some kind of todo list/kippt/bookmarking/read
later/etc.

I find having too many tabs open is taxing on the brain. It makes you feel
stressed because you have so many unfinished things to do. It also prevents
you from focusing on what is important.

------
Daiz
At any given time I usually have somewhere between 80-120 tabs open across 3-5
windows. Back when I used Firefox the problem used to be even worse - with the
scrolling tab bar, I could easily end up with 200-300 tabs open. That's why I
actually consider Chrome's constantly shrinking tabs as a feature - when I
can't see the favicons anymore, it usually means it's time to close some tabs
:-)

And since one window is rarely enough, I now have different windows for
different contexts - HN and related reading have their own window, projects
have their own etc. All in all it works out pretty well.

------
Myrmornis
Just kill the browser and restart it. They were useful at some point
yesterday. You don't need them today, or if you do, you'll soon find them
again. Chill out.

------
duck
I'm building something (simple) to help with part of this as I known I face
the same thing on a daily basis as well, but one thing I can recommend now is
using <http://www.one-tab.com/>. It works well and I find myself not saving
things off to read later, but instead just using it to find it.

~~~
lifthrasiir
I have once used OneTab. In the end, it was totally useless for me since it
completely destroyed my external memory in the form of browser tabs. Hiding
inactive tabs was definitely an wrong solution.

My two cents: The human behavior on tabs is surprisingly akin to garbage
collection. Therefore I think we need some solution inspired by the
incremental, generational GC. Gradually disappearing tabs may be such
solution, for example. Many tabs are created in a group, and such group is
garbage-collected altogether; pinned tabs behave like a statically allocated
memory; the GC has to be able to determine if the tab is created in the
context of other tabs or it is independent to others; if _I_ don't want tabs
to be disappeared then I can go to the tab for the extended period to signal
the GC not to hide this tab for now; etc.

------
venomsnake
The part I don't get is the slowing down of the system. Even with 100+ tabs
open chrome rarely gets above few gigabytes of ram combined and hardly
utilizes more than a core.

My tab coping strategy is - just keep them open, every few days close all. If
I havent checked it in 24 hours chances are it is not important.

~~~
bhoomit
It does slow down my system. I'm using MacPro i5, 4GB RAM for development. In
my case machine gave up when you try to debug JS/watch video on youtube when
you have so many tabs open.

------
melloclello
Yes and no, what we need is a better way to bookmark and navigate branching
paths through our browser history.

------
gabipurcaru
I do this too, like everyone else, but when I notice there are too many tabs
opened, I just bite the bullet and close everything except for the currently
opened tab (and sometimes close that too). Manual garbage collector.

------
shanselman
Yep, "Read Later" and Instapaper for the WIN.
[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TwoMustHaveToolsForAMoreReadab...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TwoMustHaveToolsForAMoreReadableWeb.aspx)

------
utopkara
If you aren't using it already OneTab is an amazing chrome extension:
<http://www.one-tab.com/>

"Whenever you find yourself with too many tabs, click the OneTab icon to
convert all of your tabs into a list. When you need to access the tabs again,
you can either restore them individually or all at once.

When your tabs are in the OneTab list, you will save up to 95% of memory
because you will have reduced the number of tabs open in Google Chrome."

~~~
utopkara
I also use Session Buddy and Tab Organizer Chrome extensions. OneTab solves
90% of the problem for me though.

------
IvyMike
The Tab Count extension in Chrome lets me know that I have 88 tabs open right
now. Things usually get out of control somewhere around 150.

I do know by experience that 256 is NOT a limit.

Please forgive the ridiculous chrome webstore URL, but here's the extension:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
count/cfokcacd...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
count/cfokcacdaonnckdmopmcgeanhkebeaio)

~~~
bhoomit
In my 1280x800 resolution screen it's impossible to find needed tabs after 35+
tabs(i can't see the favicons).

------
JanJanJan
1\. Read Later/Instapaper. 2\. Manual garbage collection. 3\. Tab Ahead.
Sublime Text's »Go To Anything«-like Chrome extension to help me navigate
through the unavoidable mess of my open tabs.
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
ahead/naoajjeo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
ahead/naoajjeoiblmpegfelhkapanmmaaghmi)

------
chewxy
Opera had multitab browsing before Firefox did (or Phoenix). But then again
Opera was paid software at that point.

Nowadays I have a personal rule: If there are more than 10 tabs per browser,
close until 10 tabs remain. Unless one of the tabs is this:
<http://i.imgur.com/9yacZ5b.jpg>

~~~
cwzwarich
Opera wasn't the first browser with tabbed browsing by far. There were a lot
of Windows browsers that embedded the Trident engine, and some of them used
variants of MDI for browsing. A few of them used tabs, the first well-known
one being NetCaptor. Interestingly enough, it put the tabs on the bottom,
which makes a bit more sense from a Fitts' Law perspective than putting the
tabs near the other controls. This was a few years before Opera switched to
tabbed browsing.

~~~
ajstiles
Fun to see NetCaptor mentioned here... I wrote it. The first version was
released in 1998. I put the tabs on the bottom because HomeSite, the HTML
editor that inspired NetCaptor, had tabs on the bottom.

------
flexd
I use <http://kippt.com/> to store things I want to read later.. I still end
up having 50+++ tabs but that way I can close things I haven't read and put
them into a queue.. some day I might read them.

~~~
bhoomit
Same here, there's about 500 links pending in my Pocket.

------
ruficornis
1\. Lynx 2\. <http://surf.suckless.org/> 3\. <http://suckless.org/rocks>

~~~
derleth
<http://w3m.sourceforge.net/>

------
bowerbird
i'd like it if the browser would download the page, and save it to my hard-
drive, with a summary title (which it might have to generate after an
analysis), and then re-load it whenever i wanted to view it... (and delete it
entirely when instructed to do that.)

in other words, use disk-space instead of memory...

-bowerbird

