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Wow. I've been getting more and more frustrated with how poorly Chrome handles even a moderately large number of tabs (~150), and it sounds like my savior is go

Wow. I've been getting more and more frustrated with how poorly Chrome handles even a moderately large number of tabs (~150), and it sounds like my savior is going to be ... Firefox. Huh. Wouldn't have guessed it, but I'll totally take it. I have a nice extension for Chrome called Quick Tabs that gives me a searchable list of my open tabs and makes it easy to find things I have open... anyone know which of the several things that seem to do that with Firefox would be the best to use?

kbrosnan 9y ago
"% foo" will search your open tabs for foo. See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/awesome-bar-search-firefox-bookmarks-history-tabs#w_changing-results-on-the-fly https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/awesome-bar-search-fire... for other characters that will filter the search results for other data such as bookmarks, history, tags, etc.
- Flammy 9y ago
  Cool trick... But I wish it did a full text search as it appears to only search URLs and tab titles. (maybe there is a different symbol that does full text?)
  - pritambaral 9y ago
    Add a '#' to further restrict the search to page titles.
- Manishearth 9y ago
  And even if you don't use %, the awesomebar will include open tabs in results if it thinks them relevant!
- Fej 9y ago
  Wait, Chrome doesn't have tab search built in? Jeez. TIL. Couldn't live without it.
- hedning 9y ago
  You can also configure the character used to search only tabs (I use ",") with "browser.urlbar.restrict.openpage" in about:config.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
It's unfortunate because back in ~2010 I used to open over 1,000 tabs in Chrome at a time. It's very useful when doing research: each window represents a topic, and each topic can spawn 30+ tabs. Nowadays Chrome keels over at around 150, like you say. It also leaks memory like a sieve, so if your hard drive is anywhere close to full you'll end up with a lovely OS X popup saying all your running programs have been frozen and that your system is out of memory (since it can't page to disk because it's full).
- fletchowns 9y ago
  There has got to be a better solution to this problem than having 1,000 tabs open in a web browser. That sounds like an absolute nightmare.
  - awalton 9y ago
    I don't understand this perspective. It's similar to saying "Surely there's a better solution than having 1000 files on your file system. That sounds like a nightmare." It's not like you're actively monitoring every tab at once, you just have the knowledge ready to go and at a finger's whim. You use extensions like Tab Hunter to jump directly to the tab you care about. Yeah, you could do the same with using a bunch of profiles and bookmarks... but then you need to copy your login cookies and such and it just becomes a mess. I've tried many, many other solutions over the years and simply having a huge number of tabs is the one that continues to Just Work.
    - zdkl 9y ago
      > It's similar to saying "Surely there's a better solution than having 1000 files on your file system. That sounds like a nightmare." No, it's similar to saying "Surely there's a better solution than having 1000 radio/tv channels tuned on at once, waiting for you to decide which one is relevant" Like why not open what you need when you need it rather than squirreling all those "maybes"?
      - sillysaurus3 9y ago
KZeillmann 9y ago
Out of curiosity, and because the article doesn't delve into it, why do you have 150 tabs open? In the course of my regular browsing, I usually have 3-4, and never more than 10-15. It's not something I've ever considered to have that many tabs open
- zzalpha 9y ago
  As far as I can tell it's all about depth-first vs breadth-first. I find the same people that like to open lots of tabs also prefer tabs that open in the background. Why? Because the browse breadth first. They'll be reading something and in the midst of it, see something they want to dig into, and open a new tab while continuing on the page they're currently on. This repeats a few times, and then once done with that content they go the next level down. Then lather-rinse-repeat. This causes a queue of pages to form (and BTW, for you programming newbies out there, this is a great way to visualize how recursion-less breadth-first tree traversal works). I tend to be much more depth-first. When I open a tab, it's because I want to start exploring what's in that page. So I always have my browser focus new tabs (and screw you, Chrome, for only making that possible through an extension...). Then I'll pop back out and continue. In that model, you can just throw tabs away as you're done with them.
  - rosser 9y ago
    This is broadly my process, too. I'll do a search, and background-open all of the results that seem responsive as I skim them, to read in depth once I think I've found "enough". Most of them of course get closed quickly upon ... uh, tabbing to them, because they weren't as material as I'd thought from the summary. Then, sometimes (read: often), I'll recurse. This way, in my experience, I tend to find more (as in quantity) relevant info, from which I can sieve quality of info, than if I were to serialize my search, going depth-first. YM, as always, MV.
    - zzalpha 9y ago
      I strongly suspect this depends on a) the person and how they process information, and b) the kind of research being performed. Usually when I'm researching, it's typically because I'm searching for the solution to a problem. In that case, a large quantity of information isn't useful. I just need an answer, not a survey of all possible answers. So once I find it, I can abort the search. Researching breadth-first may cause me to build up a queue of tabs unnecessarily. If, on the other hand, I was researching to synthesize large quantities of data from multiple sources, absolutely your workflow makes a lot of sense.
zzalpha 9y ago
Not to at all dispute your use case/requirements or anything, but as a depth-first browser user, I can't even fathom a world in which 150 tabs qualifies as "moderately" large, and not "how many tabs???" large. And 1000+ (as cited by a sibling poster)? Wow! I wonder if this "I want to read this but I'll set it aside for now" model of browsing might be better served with a different UI metaphor...
- Arelius 9y ago
  > I wonder if this "I want to read this but I'll set it aside for now" model of browsing might be better served with a different UI metaphor... Sure, you're welcome to design it, I'll even give other methods a try occasionally, but for me every other metaphor has proved worse in some way and I'm perfectly happy working this way, there could be something better, but it isn't bad in a way that I feel needs to get fixed.
  - hbosch 9y ago
    Have you tried tree-style tabs, for instance?
    - Arelius 9y ago
      Sure, I think they take up more real-estate and didn't really improve my workflow.
  - zzalpha 9y ago
    We'll, I can think of one obvious problem right off the bat: when you accumulate enough tabs they're no longer discoverable. Many folks here have offered extensions or workarounds for making finding/searching tabs easier, but to me this is an issue introduced by the UI metaphor, and maybe better solved some other way. Maybe. I just observe that tabs seem to be a cumbersome tool for a very legitimate use case, and I gotta think there must be room to innovate.
    - Arelius 9y ago
pokemongoaway 9y ago
Do you have saved sessions with lots of tabs from chrome that you were able to import into firefox? Hoping there's an established method :)
TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
Firefox's “Awesome Bar” will suggest open tabs and let you switch to them like any other site.
- riri-au 9y ago
  Yep! No need for extensions, you can see it working here: https://youtu.be/pKE0Oc3yIBs?t=53 https://youtu.be/pKE0Oc3yIBs?t=53
guilhas 9y ago
Tabhunter; hugo search; All tabs helper;
riri-au 9y ago
Firefox already does this - that's why it's the awesome bar. You can see it in action here https://youtu.be/pKE0Oc3yIBs?t=53 https://youtu.be/pKE0Oc3yIBs?t=53
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  Awesome bar is nice, it's like using a crippled opera from 10 years ago.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
    Sadly, I have found that almost any new feature of browsers these days is like using a crippled opera from 10 years ago.
Manishearth 9y ago
I use Tab Center (now Tab Center Redux), which shows you the tabs on the sidebar (great for >20 tabs). The sidebar also has a search bar to search open tabs! https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-center-redux/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-center-re... Besides that, by default (no addons or settings necessary) Firefox's awesomebar (the URL bar) will search open tabs if you type stuff. This is great because often I'll want to open a site and it will show me that I already have a tab open for that and let me choose to just switch there anyway. I am surprised Chrome doesn't have this yet, really.
sfink 9y ago
Honestly, I find that the built-in behavior is good enough: go to the location bar (ctrl-L), type "% <substring>" and it will search through all open tab titles as an autocomplete thing. It doesn't search tab content (probably good since most tabs won't be loaded), but it's good enough for me most of the time. Great feature, completely undiscoverable.
bigbugbag 9y ago
there's tab groups and tab groups helper but this will be dropped by firefox in november so ...

kbrosnan 9y ago

"% foo" will search your open tabs for foo. See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/awesome-bar-search-firefox-bookmarks-history-tabs#w_changing-results-on-the-fly https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/awesome-bar-search-fire... for other characters that will filter the search results for other data such as bookmarks, history, tags, etc.

Flammy 9y ago
Cool trick... But I wish it did a full text search as it appears to only search URLs and tab titles. (maybe there is a different symbol that does full text?)
- pritambaral 9y ago
  Add a '#' to further restrict the search to page titles.
Manishearth 9y ago
And even if you don't use %, the awesomebar will include open tabs in results if it thinks them relevant!
Fej 9y ago
Wait, Chrome doesn't have tab search built in? Jeez. TIL. Couldn't live without it.
hedning 9y ago
You can also configure the character used to search only tabs (I use ",") with "browser.urlbar.restrict.openpage" in about:config.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

It's unfortunate because back in ~2010 I used to open over 1,000 tabs in Chrome at a time. It's very useful when doing research: each window represents a topic, and each topic can spawn 30+ tabs. Nowadays Chrome keels over at around 150, like you say. It also leaks memory like a sieve, so if your hard drive is anywhere close to full you'll end up with a lovely OS X popup saying all your running programs have been frozen and that your system is out of memory (since it can't page to disk because it's full).

fletchowns 9y ago
There has got to be a better solution to this problem than having 1,000 tabs open in a web browser. That sounds like an absolute nightmare.
- awalton 9y ago
  I don't understand this perspective. It's similar to saying "Surely there's a better solution than having 1000 files on your file system. That sounds like a nightmare." It's not like you're actively monitoring every tab at once, you just have the knowledge ready to go and at a finger's whim. You use extensions like Tab Hunter to jump directly to the tab you care about. Yeah, you could do the same with using a bunch of profiles and bookmarks... but then you need to copy your login cookies and such and it just becomes a mess. I've tried many, many other solutions over the years and simply having a huge number of tabs is the one that continues to Just Work.
  - zdkl 9y ago
    > It's similar to saying "Surely there's a better solution than having 1000 files on your file system. That sounds like a nightmare." No, it's similar to saying "Surely there's a better solution than having 1000 radio/tv channels tuned on at once, waiting for you to decide which one is relevant" Like why not open what you need when you need it rather than squirreling all those "maybes"?
    - sillysaurus3 9y ago

KZeillmann 9y ago

Out of curiosity, and because the article doesn't delve into it, why do you have 150 tabs open? In the course of my regular browsing, I usually have 3-4, and never more than 10-15. It's not something I've ever considered to have that many tabs open

zzalpha 9y ago
As far as I can tell it's all about depth-first vs breadth-first. I find the same people that like to open lots of tabs also prefer tabs that open in the background. Why? Because the browse breadth first. They'll be reading something and in the midst of it, see something they want to dig into, and open a new tab while continuing on the page they're currently on. This repeats a few times, and then once done with that content they go the next level down. Then lather-rinse-repeat. This causes a queue of pages to form (and BTW, for you programming newbies out there, this is a great way to visualize how recursion-less breadth-first tree traversal works). I tend to be much more depth-first. When I open a tab, it's because I want to start exploring what's in that page. So I always have my browser focus new tabs (and screw you, Chrome, for only making that possible through an extension...). Then I'll pop back out and continue. In that model, you can just throw tabs away as you're done with them.
- rosser 9y ago
  This is broadly my process, too. I'll do a search, and background-open all of the results that seem responsive as I skim them, to read in depth once I think I've found "enough". Most of them of course get closed quickly upon ... uh, tabbing to them, because they weren't as material as I'd thought from the summary. Then, sometimes (read: often), I'll recurse. This way, in my experience, I tend to find more (as in quantity) relevant info, from which I can sieve quality of info, than if I were to serialize my search, going depth-first. YM, as always, MV.
  - zzalpha 9y ago
    I strongly suspect this depends on a) the person and how they process information, and b) the kind of research being performed. Usually when I'm researching, it's typically because I'm searching for the solution to a problem. In that case, a large quantity of information isn't useful. I just need an answer, not a survey of all possible answers. So once I find it, I can abort the search. Researching breadth-first may cause me to build up a queue of tabs unnecessarily. If, on the other hand, I was researching to synthesize large quantities of data from multiple sources, absolutely your workflow makes a lot of sense.

zzalpha 9y ago

Not to at all dispute your use case/requirements or anything, but as a depth-first browser user, I can't even fathom a world in which 150 tabs qualifies as "moderately" large, and not "how many tabs???" large. And 1000+ (as cited by a sibling poster)? Wow! I wonder if this "I want to read this but I'll set it aside for now" model of browsing might be better served with a different UI metaphor...

Arelius 9y ago
> I wonder if this "I want to read this but I'll set it aside for now" model of browsing might be better served with a different UI metaphor... Sure, you're welcome to design it, I'll even give other methods a try occasionally, but for me every other metaphor has proved worse in some way and I'm perfectly happy working this way, there could be something better, but it isn't bad in a way that I feel needs to get fixed.
- hbosch 9y ago
  Have you tried tree-style tabs, for instance?
  - Arelius 9y ago
    Sure, I think they take up more real-estate and didn't really improve my workflow.
- zzalpha 9y ago
  We'll, I can think of one obvious problem right off the bat: when you accumulate enough tabs they're no longer discoverable. Many folks here have offered extensions or workarounds for making finding/searching tabs easier, but to me this is an issue introduced by the UI metaphor, and maybe better solved some other way. Maybe. I just observe that tabs seem to be a cumbersome tool for a very legitimate use case, and I gotta think there must be room to innovate.
  - Arelius 9y ago

pokemongoaway 9y ago

Do you have saved sessions with lots of tabs from chrome that you were able to import into firefox? Hoping there's an established method :)

TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago

Firefox's “Awesome Bar” will suggest open tabs and let you switch to them like any other site.

riri-au 9y ago
Yep! No need for extensions, you can see it working here: https://youtu.be/pKE0Oc3yIBs?t=53 https://youtu.be/pKE0Oc3yIBs?t=53

guilhas 9y ago

Tabhunter; hugo search; All tabs helper;

riri-au 9y ago

Firefox already does this - that's why it's the awesome bar. You can see it in action here https://youtu.be/pKE0Oc3yIBs?t=53 https://youtu.be/pKE0Oc3yIBs?t=53

bigbugbag 9y ago
Awesome bar is nice, it's like using a crippled opera from 10 years ago.
- Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
  Sadly, I have found that almost any new feature of browsers these days is like using a crippled opera from 10 years ago.

Manishearth 9y ago

I use Tab Center (now Tab Center Redux), which shows you the tabs on the sidebar (great for >20 tabs). The sidebar also has a search bar to search open tabs! https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-center-redux/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-center-re... Besides that, by default (no addons or settings necessary) Firefox's awesomebar (the URL bar) will search open tabs if you type stuff. This is great because often I'll want to open a site and it will show me that I already have a tab open for that and let me choose to just switch there anyway. I am surprised Chrome doesn't have this yet, really.

sfink 9y ago

Honestly, I find that the built-in behavior is good enough: go to the location bar (ctrl-L), type "% <substring>" and it will search through all open tab titles as an autocomplete thing. It doesn't search tab content (probably good since most tabs won't be loaded), but it's good enough for me most of the time. Great feature, completely undiscoverable.

bigbugbag 9y ago

there's tab groups and tab groups helper but this will be dropped by firefox in november so ...