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I start doing that, but have made an effort to always start a week with a fresh browser, one tab open. If I haven't read the article before the week was up, cl

I start doing that, but have made an effort to always start a week with a fresh browser, one tab open. If I haven't read the article before the week was up, clearly it wasn't important enough.

archagon 9y ago
In principle I agree, but in practice... I can't let go of my hoarding ways. What if there's a nugget of information hiding in all those tabs that could ︎change my life?
- chasote 9y ago
  Do you folks happen to have Kindles? I use instapaper to save articles as I come across them and then have it all wrapped up and sent to my Kindle once a week. My own customized magazine to read throughout the week as I see fit on an easy on the eyes e-ink format.
- sn9 9y ago
  I call it "information hoarding". The struggle is real.
- etiam 9y ago
  Frequent occurrence, in my experience. And I'm very happy about better support for this kludge, but I do wish that someone would get to the roots of the needs that cause this use of tabs, and design the correct interface for it instead.
  - hobs 9y ago
    They kind of did with Firefox, it was tab groups, started as a plugin, they integrated it, and then they dropped the feature (I assume) because almost no one (except me) used it. You could create visual groups and lay out sets of tabs and even name the sets, and switch between them at will. It was awesome.
    - etiam 9y ago
      I vaguely think I had the extension version at some point but it was probably in an awkward stage then.. I never really noticed the integrated version. From the way you describe it I think it sounds like a great start for at least some of the needs driving this. I suspect in many cases heavy multi-tab use comes from a need to lay out sets of documents for use together in some sort of spatial metaphor. The traditional desktop model often does a pretty good job of covering this for local files and native programs, but I find browsers to be far weaker at supporting it. As a complement, for the potentially-life-changing(-but-not-right-now-for-goodness-sake) things and other valuable resources I will almost certainly never find my way back to otherwise, I think it might be a nice start if I had a 1-keypress way to drop them, with metadata, into an local, indexed archive. The followup challenge to that would be a really good interface to getting stuff out again. Tools like Zotero could in principle cover the first part of this niche automatically already, but I wouldn't want the backlog archive (sluggishly) dropped together with my references without any shadow of compartmentalization, so I don't really view that as a ready solution.
  - int_19h 9y ago
    Try Vivaldi. It also has a very interesting fresh take on history.
- ric2b 9y ago
  The best part is when you wait so long that the link breaks when you finally open the tab, and then you feel free because it wasn't really your fault that you didn't read it!
- tkdc926 9y ago
  Here's the way I do it... I setup a Gmail account that I only use to "save" links. Anytime I encounter an article that looks interesting and want to save, I just tap the browser menu, tap "Share" and share it to that email account. Works great and no more hassles with bookmarks and open tabs.

I start doing that, but have made an effort to always start a week with a fresh browser, one tab open. If I haven't read the article before the week was up, clearly it wasn't important enough.

archagon 9y ago

In principle I agree, but in practice... I can't let go of my hoarding ways. What if there's a nugget of information hiding in all those tabs that could ︎change my life?

chasote 9y ago
Do you folks happen to have Kindles? I use instapaper to save articles as I come across them and then have it all wrapped up and sent to my Kindle once a week. My own customized magazine to read throughout the week as I see fit on an easy on the eyes e-ink format.
sn9 9y ago
I call it "information hoarding". The struggle is real.
etiam 9y ago
Frequent occurrence, in my experience. And I'm very happy about better support for this kludge, but I do wish that someone would get to the roots of the needs that cause this use of tabs, and design the correct interface for it instead.
- hobs 9y ago
  They kind of did with Firefox, it was tab groups, started as a plugin, they integrated it, and then they dropped the feature (I assume) because almost no one (except me) used it. You could create visual groups and lay out sets of tabs and even name the sets, and switch between them at will. It was awesome.
  - etiam 9y ago
    I vaguely think I had the extension version at some point but it was probably in an awkward stage then.. I never really noticed the integrated version. From the way you describe it I think it sounds like a great start for at least some of the needs driving this. I suspect in many cases heavy multi-tab use comes from a need to lay out sets of documents for use together in some sort of spatial metaphor. The traditional desktop model often does a pretty good job of covering this for local files and native programs, but I find browsers to be far weaker at supporting it. As a complement, for the potentially-life-changing(-but-not-right-now-for-goodness-sake) things and other valuable resources I will almost certainly never find my way back to otherwise, I think it might be a nice start if I had a 1-keypress way to drop them, with metadata, into an local, indexed archive. The followup challenge to that would be a really good interface to getting stuff out again. Tools like Zotero could in principle cover the first part of this niche automatically already, but I wouldn't want the backlog archive (sluggishly) dropped together with my references without any shadow of compartmentalization, so I don't really view that as a ready solution.
- int_19h 9y ago
  Try Vivaldi. It also has a very interesting fresh take on history.
ric2b 9y ago
The best part is when you wait so long that the link breaks when you finally open the tab, and then you feel free because it wasn't really your fault that you didn't read it!
tkdc926 9y ago
Here's the way I do it... I setup a Gmail account that I only use to "save" links. Anytime I encounter an article that looks interesting and want to save, I just tap the browser menu, tap "Share" and share it to that email account. Works great and no more hassles with bookmarks and open tabs.