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One problem with tabs vs windows is that it just looks at two "solutions" and isn't approaching things from a use case perspective. Not that this is easy, with

by mhd 9y ago

One problem with tabs vs windows is that it just looks at two "solutions" and isn't approaching things from a use case perspective. Not that this is easy, with people having wildly different browsing habits. Thanks to the magic of the middle mouse button, I always was a heavy tab user, opening "sub-tabs" in the background for plenty of link-heavy sites (like HNews). In the early days I created lots of top-level windows and used Expose for switching between them. After discovering TreeStyleTabs, I became a one-window guy again. So it seems I'm in the tab camp. But there's still the question why I need to have that many tabs open in the first place? It's not like I'm heavily multi-tasking. There's a good reason for opening those three zeit.de news articles in separate tabs, but why do I need to retain the tab group with 13 react-redux links or 27 interesting CPAN modules? We've got a problem with browsing history. For long-time storage, there's bookmarks. I'm using pinboard for this for unified access and tagging. But if I file something there, it might be that I forget it, so I keep a tab(-group) open. Heavy tab users seem to be closer to using them as TODO items than mere window management. So it might be a good idea to look at TODO/GTD/Calendar apps for improving the stats quo. Not just filing vs. on-screen, but different levels of priorities. Maybe a bit of "AI", where Clippy reminds you that you've got a tab-group stored that contains this exact Stack Overflow article about handling NULLs in Oracle. And from there, you have quick access to the browser history "surrounding" those pages, even if it was a year ago. A "mega-expose/Jurassic Park file explorer" view of saved tabs/bookmarks, where you can drill down by tags, text etc. The tech wouldn't be the big problem, probably doable with browser extensions. But getting a good initial design for this is the difficult part. And then you find out that some Hypertext paper from the mid-70s already had all that.

Vinnl 9y ago
One of the prime benefits of using tabs as TODO's that I experience is that it is literally _zero_ effort to retain something on your TODO list, and practically zero effort to remove something from it. This means I don't have to worry about losing things I still wanted to keep track of, yet the amount of things I retain that I no longer care about is limited. Yes, there's still quite a lot of tabs that could theoretically be closed, but the cost of keeping them open is not that high (at least in Firefox, where they simply scroll out of view). So I'm not sure how much of a problem it is. There is a history function in the browser, but it's cluttered with things I don't care about that makes the things I do care about hard to find. If you look at that as a problem, then tabs could actually be seen as a solution to that.
- gkya 9y ago
  > the cost of keeping them open is not that high (at least in Firefox, where they simply scroll out of view). As a way to save some memory, if you haven't disabled history and set Firefox up such that it reloads your session when you quit and reopen, you can just restart it every now and then, and only the focused tab will get eagerly loaded.
watwut 9y ago
> So it might be a good idea to look at TODO/GTD/Calendar apps for improving the stats quo. Not just filing vs. on-screen, but different levels of priorities. You just changed zero-work instantly available all the time visible todo list into something that requires effort. > For long-time storage, there's bookmarks. Bookmarks are for things you are likely to remember later. Tabs are for things one is unlikely to remember later. Things you did not knew exist or cared, but now there is article on dzone you wanna get idea about.
- mhd 9y ago
  My memory isn't good enough to make "likely" work out here, so that wouldn't be a good fit for me. Right now it's more about "will I use this soon enough", and of course that changes depending on how much time you've got available anyway. And when that happens, I file them away on pinboard or discard them. It does work, but better integration and UX would improve things. And you might got that wrong: I don't want to assign priorities to tabs and/or bookmarks, I just regard both as being in different "priority" buckets, and maybe finer-grained distinction and ease of moving things back and forth would be a good approach. (Never mind: "all the time visible"? Not in my tab tree ;) )
gkya 9y ago
Nothing near this but I do the following: - Use tree style tabs - Use vimium ff for the ^ binding, toggles between the two tabs most recently viewed - Tabs means "read this ASAP" - Bookmarks toolbar means "read it later" - Other bookmarks folder is the bookshelf, for later potential reference - Completions only come from bookmarks - Bookmark heavily - Make sure bookmarks have meaningful and findable names Nowadays the only problem I have is linkrot. I have written a python script that analyses my places.sqlite, and it reports ~%8 linkrot, although some of that is SSL errors and some keyword search bookmarks. I'll try to extend the script so that it tries to change the likns that actually 404 to web archive ones where possible and safe. But other than this finding thing is easy for me these days. Also, DDG helps. It's my default search engine since some years I guess by now, and the ! searches have proven to be a very nice thing to have, albeit I've only scratched the surface with regards to them.

by mhd 9y ago

Vinnl 9y ago

One of the prime benefits of using tabs as TODO's that I experience is that it is literally _zero_ effort to retain something on your TODO list, and practically zero effort to remove something from it. This means I don't have to worry about losing things I still wanted to keep track of, yet the amount of things I retain that I no longer care about is limited. Yes, there's still quite a lot of tabs that could theoretically be closed, but the cost of keeping them open is not that high (at least in Firefox, where they simply scroll out of view). So I'm not sure how much of a problem it is. There is a history function in the browser, but it's cluttered with things I don't care about that makes the things I do care about hard to find. If you look at that as a problem, then tabs could actually be seen as a solution to that.

gkya 9y ago
> the cost of keeping them open is not that high (at least in Firefox, where they simply scroll out of view). As a way to save some memory, if you haven't disabled history and set Firefox up such that it reloads your session when you quit and reopen, you can just restart it every now and then, and only the focused tab will get eagerly loaded.

watwut 9y ago

> So it might be a good idea to look at TODO/GTD/Calendar apps for improving the stats quo. Not just filing vs. on-screen, but different levels of priorities. You just changed zero-work instantly available all the time visible todo list into something that requires effort. > For long-time storage, there's bookmarks. Bookmarks are for things you are likely to remember later. Tabs are for things one is unlikely to remember later. Things you did not knew exist or cared, but now there is article on dzone you wanna get idea about.

mhd 9y ago
My memory isn't good enough to make "likely" work out here, so that wouldn't be a good fit for me. Right now it's more about "will I use this soon enough", and of course that changes depending on how much time you've got available anyway. And when that happens, I file them away on pinboard or discard them. It does work, but better integration and UX would improve things. And you might got that wrong: I don't want to assign priorities to tabs and/or bookmarks, I just regard both as being in different "priority" buckets, and maybe finer-grained distinction and ease of moving things back and forth would be a good approach. (Never mind: "all the time visible"? Not in my tab tree ;) )

gkya 9y ago

Nothing near this but I do the following: - Use tree style tabs - Use vimium ff for the ^ binding, toggles between the two tabs most recently viewed - Tabs means "read this ASAP" - Bookmarks toolbar means "read it later" - Other bookmarks folder is the bookshelf, for later potential reference - Completions only come from bookmarks - Bookmark heavily - Make sure bookmarks have meaningful and findable names Nowadays the only problem I have is linkrot. I have written a python script that analyses my places.sqlite, and it reports ~%8 linkrot, although some of that is SSL errors and some keyword search bookmarks. I'll try to extend the script so that it tries to change the likns that actually 404 to web archive ones where possible and safe. But other than this finding thing is easy for me these days. Also, DDG helps. It's my default search engine since some years I guess by now, and the ! searches have proven to be a very nice thing to have, albeit I've only scratched the surface with regards to them.