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This whole effort is misguided. I can't fathom wanting to name a group of tabs. As it is I barely ever take the initiative to organize bookmarks, and those are

This whole effort is misguided. I can't fathom wanting to name a group of tabs. As it is I barely ever take the initiative to organize bookmarks, and those are permanent. People don't need a filing cabinet for something that should be ephemeral and self-limiting. When your desk gets buried under a skin of receipts, junk mail envelopes, and water-ringed Economists from last May, the only proper organizational tool is a trash can. Tabs are just a modern incarnation of the same problem.

jey 16y ago
Sure, but the trashcan is the "proper organizational tool" only because a better solution doesn't exist yet, not because it solves the problem optimally. Isn't there some reason that copy of the Economist is sitting on your desk in the first place? Presumably you do want to read the interesting articles in it, and it'd be handy if the most interesting ones were somehow brought to you. Now, Tab Candy doesn't do that, but I think it's at least a step in the right direction of trying to address the cases that are somewhere between "garbage collect the tab" and "immediately use the tab".
- goodside 16y ago
  The better solution is search, which is notably not an organizational tool at all as far as the user is concerned. Will there some day be a solution that's better still? Yes. But I guarantee it won't involve the user sorting into buckets or affixing labels.
AndrewDucker 16y ago
I don't have a bunch of tabs I want to throw away - I have a load of them that I'm using, for different purposes. Being able to separate them out from each other would be fantastic. Naming them is less necessary.
- yxhuvud 16y ago
  Tab Kit is a plugin worth looking at.
extension 16y ago
Presumably, a system like this would ultimately replace bookmarks and eliminate the distinction between an open page and a saved one. Naturally, background pages would have to be swapped out of memory in some intelligent way, which Aza did mention. Personally, I'd say this thing fits my browsing habits perfectly. It's been obvious to me that things would go in this direction since I started using Tree Style Tabs.
code_duck 16y ago
I don't do this, but I know many medium-experience users who keep literally 100s of tabs open at a time. It's like they use it instead of bookmarks. That sort of person would love this.
- pornel 16y ago
  I keep 100s of tabs open, but it's not because I specifically want tabs, it's because it's the laziest solution. To me Tab Candy is the extra work that made me avoid bookmarks.
ekiru 16y ago
I would love to have something like tab candy in Chrome. As it is, I have between 8 and 12 Chrome windows open in different workspaces, each containing a certain group of tabs. For example, I typically read HN in my "recreational-web-browsing" window. It has my email, my RSS, twitter/identi.ca, HN, etc. In another window, I have the set of webcomics I want to start reading or am in the process of catching up to(so that I start subscribing by RSS instead). In four windows, I have all the web-pages I've been reading for various projects I'm working on. In another are my online placement tests for my university. With something like tab candy, I would end up consolidating the webcomics and possibly the placement tests into groups of tabs within the recreational browsing window. I might consolidate some of the project windows together(although the Emacs and terminal windows I keep open associated with the projects might deter me from doing this much. Concerning not organizing permanent bookmarks, tabs can be as permanent as you want them to be in any browser with a "save tabs on exit" or similar option. But they're also much easier to organize. Just move windows and tabs about. Of course, they do take up memory, but if I had something like tab candy with an option to individually mark tabs as not needing to be kept loaded, that would almost certainly totally replace my use of bookmarks.

jey 16y ago

Sure, but the trashcan is the "proper organizational tool" only because a better solution doesn't exist yet, not because it solves the problem optimally. Isn't there some reason that copy of the Economist is sitting on your desk in the first place? Presumably you do want to read the interesting articles in it, and it'd be handy if the most interesting ones were somehow brought to you. Now, Tab Candy doesn't do that, but I think it's at least a step in the right direction of trying to address the cases that are somewhere between "garbage collect the tab" and "immediately use the tab".

goodside 16y ago
The better solution is search, which is notably not an organizational tool at all as far as the user is concerned. Will there some day be a solution that's better still? Yes. But I guarantee it won't involve the user sorting into buckets or affixing labels.

AndrewDucker 16y ago

I don't have a bunch of tabs I want to throw away - I have a load of them that I'm using, for different purposes. Being able to separate them out from each other would be fantastic. Naming them is less necessary.

yxhuvud 16y ago
Tab Kit is a plugin worth looking at.

extension 16y ago

Presumably, a system like this would ultimately replace bookmarks and eliminate the distinction between an open page and a saved one. Naturally, background pages would have to be swapped out of memory in some intelligent way, which Aza did mention. Personally, I'd say this thing fits my browsing habits perfectly. It's been obvious to me that things would go in this direction since I started using Tree Style Tabs.

code_duck 16y ago

I don't do this, but I know many medium-experience users who keep literally 100s of tabs open at a time. It's like they use it instead of bookmarks. That sort of person would love this.

pornel 16y ago
I keep 100s of tabs open, but it's not because I specifically want tabs, it's because it's the laziest solution. To me Tab Candy is the extra work that made me avoid bookmarks.

ekiru 16y ago

I would love to have something like tab candy in Chrome. As it is, I have between 8 and 12 Chrome windows open in different workspaces, each containing a certain group of tabs. For example, I typically read HN in my "recreational-web-browsing" window. It has my email, my RSS, twitter/identi.ca, HN, etc. In another window, I have the set of webcomics I want to start reading or am in the process of catching up to(so that I start subscribing by RSS instead). In four windows, I have all the web-pages I've been reading for various projects I'm working on. In another are my online placement tests for my university. With something like tab candy, I would end up consolidating the webcomics and possibly the placement tests into groups of tabs within the recreational browsing window. I might consolidate some of the project windows together(although the Emacs and terminal windows I keep open associated with the projects might deter me from doing this much. Concerning not organizing permanent bookmarks, tabs can be as permanent as you want them to be in any browser with a "save tabs on exit" or similar option. But they're also much easier to organize. Just move windows and tabs about. Of course, they do take up memory, but if I had something like tab candy with an option to individually mark tabs as not needing to be kept loaded, that would almost certainly totally replace my use of bookmarks.