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I'm surprised he only has 20. I use tabs as a reading queue...usually from news aggregators like HN. If I waited till I had time to read everything that looked

I'm surprised he only has 20. I use tabs as a reading queue...usually from news aggregators like HN. If I waited till I had time to read everything that looked interesting, I'd miss most of the stuff that looked interesting. If I just queue it up, it can sit quietly in the background and wait for me to take a break from work. I use different browsers to logically separate my groups of viewing habits. One is open for casual HN style surfing, one for a hobby I'm work on, one for work, one for school, one to isolate media apps like Pandora or Hulu, etc. Each has a queue of pages I was working on/reading/in the middle of something and had to run out to a meeting or whatever and didn't get back to it immediately. Heck I've had half-written replies in emails up for days in a separate browser with all of the related research tabs I was using while constructing the email up as well. I tried to keeping myself to just a handful of tabs in a single window but I found I was missing so much good stuff I just gave it up. I find this only works if you have a high abstract -> concrete learning style (sometimes called "synthesizers"). Not everybody works that way and that's fine - but other workflows drive me batty. Once I've assembled everything in a browser instance, I can even let it go for a week or two, forgetting completely about it before returning devoting my attention to the "concept" of that instance -- the semantics of what it's for are all there because everything is grouped in an instance. I can dash off a several thousand word paper in just a few hours of focused concentration because all of the research is done and sitting there for me -- left by my past self. But if, like most people, my attention wanders after a few hours, I can switch instances and immediately context shift to a completely different semantic set and let my mind chew on the other problem unconsciously. Even IRL, when in college, I'd have different tables setup the same way for different classes or projects. All the books and research notes in a stack next to the half-written paper.

swernli 17y ago
I completely agree with this usage case, but I still don't miss it on the iPad. I think this comes down to the fact that I'm never trying to balance work and casual browsing on the iPad. At work, I might have several 'tab queues' open in order to keep a hold on articles or sites I want to glance at between things. But on the iPad, I just go one article at a time, reading them in turn, browsing the comments too. I never feel the need to build the queue, because I'm not going to be turning away from the pages for work anytime soon, and even if I do, the work is being done in a different place, so I just put the device down. Then again, I also leave the iPad at home, as a purely entertainment and communications device. Couch and bed surfing, comic viewing, and video watching.
derefr 17y ago
Wouldn't it be relatively easy to create an alternative iPad browser using the Webkit component, but with the chrome more aimed at this style of surfing? It would only take a few alterations from the default: Pages wouldn't be loaded until you actually switch to them, and so all non-active tabs are really just quick, forced-order bookmarks; clicking on links would always push them onto the queue (with the option to push-front if something is important); and the primary interaction mechanism would be an "I'm done with this one, give me another" button, which deletes the current bookmark and opens the next one. It could be called WikiWalker: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WikiWalk http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WikiWalk (Yes, I have, in fact, linked to the most degenerate case of the need for such a browser.) Actually, upon further reflection—why doesn't this browser exist for PCs yet? This is an itch that has needed scratching for a long while now; I'm surprised in its apparent non-existence (Tree Tabs doesn't count.)
- elblanco 17y ago
  Yes please! A browser built around this workflow would be fantastic. You don't have any idea how many times I've accidentally closed one of my "workspace" browsers and left another browser open and lost several hours worth of research because there's no good way to retrieve all of the tabs that were there in a simple way. Keeping the tabs as bookmarks would likewise be even better since I've brought even quad core systems with 8 GB of RAM to their knees on occasion. The only way I can get along now is by using extensions like flashblocker which helps somewhat with the performance, but still doesn't help much with the workflow. The worst thing is that there seems to be this weird proclivity for GUI designers to put long lists of things horizontally instead of vertically, the Windows Task Bar, Tabs in browsers, diagrams in Visio, etc. Wouldn't these things just work about a billion times better as a simple list along the left or right side of the window? Especially since most screens these days are so wide, web pages never actually fill them up horizontally. (Yes, I'd tried various extensions, but none of them really seem to do what I want).
  - gte910h 17y ago
    You happen to have interested an iPad developer who thinks this is an excellent idea. Please send more details on this idea to the address in my profile, and I'll see what can be done to make it a reality in a quite moment one day :OD

swernli 17y ago

I completely agree with this usage case, but I still don't miss it on the iPad. I think this comes down to the fact that I'm never trying to balance work and casual browsing on the iPad. At work, I might have several 'tab queues' open in order to keep a hold on articles or sites I want to glance at between things. But on the iPad, I just go one article at a time, reading them in turn, browsing the comments too. I never feel the need to build the queue, because I'm not going to be turning away from the pages for work anytime soon, and even if I do, the work is being done in a different place, so I just put the device down. Then again, I also leave the iPad at home, as a purely entertainment and communications device. Couch and bed surfing, comic viewing, and video watching.

derefr 17y ago

Wouldn't it be relatively easy to create an alternative iPad browser using the Webkit component, but with the chrome more aimed at this style of surfing? It would only take a few alterations from the default: Pages wouldn't be loaded until you actually switch to them, and so all non-active tabs are really just quick, forced-order bookmarks; clicking on links would always push them onto the queue (with the option to push-front if something is important); and the primary interaction mechanism would be an "I'm done with this one, give me another" button, which deletes the current bookmark and opens the next one. It could be called WikiWalker: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WikiWalk http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WikiWalk (Yes, I have, in fact, linked to the most degenerate case of the need for such a browser.) Actually, upon further reflection—why doesn't this browser exist for PCs yet? This is an itch that has needed scratching for a long while now; I'm surprised in its apparent non-existence (Tree Tabs doesn't count.)

elblanco 17y ago
Yes please! A browser built around this workflow would be fantastic. You don't have any idea how many times I've accidentally closed one of my "workspace" browsers and left another browser open and lost several hours worth of research because there's no good way to retrieve all of the tabs that were there in a simple way. Keeping the tabs as bookmarks would likewise be even better since I've brought even quad core systems with 8 GB of RAM to their knees on occasion. The only way I can get along now is by using extensions like flashblocker which helps somewhat with the performance, but still doesn't help much with the workflow. The worst thing is that there seems to be this weird proclivity for GUI designers to put long lists of things horizontally instead of vertically, the Windows Task Bar, Tabs in browsers, diagrams in Visio, etc. Wouldn't these things just work about a billion times better as a simple list along the left or right side of the window? Especially since most screens these days are so wide, web pages never actually fill them up horizontally. (Yes, I'd tried various extensions, but none of them really seem to do what I want).
- gte910h 17y ago
  You happen to have interested an iPad developer who thinks this is an excellent idea. Please send more details on this idea to the address in my profile, and I'll see what can be done to make it a reality in a quite moment one day :OD