6 ms·

Tomato/tomato. I don’t understand how people browse the web with more than 4 or 5 tabs open at the same time.

by hbosch 8y ago

gamma-male 8y ago
You never have more than 5 tabs open at the same time? You’re probably the minority and you probably have learned to do that because the tabs on top put these constraints on you. You would likely browse the web very differently if you had TST. Give it a try.
- gbear605 8y ago
  I also work in this way. I use tabs as my “working memory” for whatever my current project is. Having fewer tabs helps keep me on track working on a single topic. When I’m done with that task, it helps me transition by having closed all the tabs. When I want to save pages in the long term, I use bookmarks.
  - mclehman 8y ago
    I use TST to supplement my working memory. I'm usually working within a particular subtree of all my (way too many) tabs. I probably still have more tabs in such a subtree than most people, but the same idea applies: the subtree keeps my focus on a single topic, and when I finish I can either collapse the subtree (my default) or close it entirely. What I find invaluable is the super quick ramp-up after context switching, especially if whatever pulled me away turned out to be more work/time than expected.
  - petepete 8y ago
    It's odd that so many people confuse the roles of tabs and bookmarks. Perhaps it's a sign that the bookmark UX isn't good (or prevalent) enough. I generally have four pinned tabs open for email, Slack and Trello, plus another five related to what I'm working on.
    - jehlakj 8y ago
      I disagree. It’s the poor history UX that’s the problem. Get rid of tabs altogether and show the history on the left side. Or if you like fuzzy searching, look them up in the extension store.
      - petepete 8y ago
        My history is too messy, I often flit to sites for a couple of seconds and backtrack. Tabs make lots of sense, windows let me organise them into groups of things I'm currently working on. That's all sensible. Anything I come across that I think might be useful to my future self, I bookmark it. Again, working with the provided functionality. Sensible. When people have 200 tabs open and can't remember what's where, that's what puzzles me. I've seen people flick through dozens of tabs looking for a piece of documentation they saw yesterday afternoon. We already have the tools that make browsing and researching efficient. People just need to learn to use them.
        jehlakj 8y ago
        I’ve been using an extension that orders tabs by MRU and it has my history baked in. I don’t even use tabs anymore on my text editors as I found that it’s unnecessary if you have fuzzy searching that lists the files in MRU order as suggestions. The problem with bookmarks for most of us is that users don’t typically manage their bookmarks and delete the links they don’t need.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - jplayer01 8y ago
      I'm not confusing anything. Tabs let me switch to different projects incredibly quickly. Bookmarks just don't work.
      - gbear605 8y ago
        Bookmarks have a great ux for it: save all open tabs to a bookmark folder, open all bookmarks in a folder
- seqizz 8y ago
  That's a habit. I've been using TST for some time and this "no useless tabs" policy in my brain will not seem to change.
- gergi 8y ago
  The minority on HN, maybe. Definitely not to the general public. The general user is almost certainly not using more than 1 tab at any time.
kakarot 8y ago
I have about 400-500 open tabs spread between three browsers on three systems which I'm using simultaneously. At least on my phone, Firefox Focus has helped immensely.
- gitgud 8y ago
  Why though? Is it all in the same context? I can't stand 10's of tabs let alone 100's!!
  - kakarot 8y ago
    Each instance of firefox has its own context. One is unsafe browsing, one is personal browsing, one is development-related browsing, a la Qubes. I used to have a problem with messy, unnavigable bookmarks so now I keep my bookmarks lean and rely on tabs to hold pages I may only need for a month or two at most. It's pretty quick to navigate to a tab with Ctrl+L
    - mthoms 8y ago
      How do you create different "instances" of Firefox on the desktop? Or are you just talking about different windows?
      - kakarot 8y ago
        I run a hypervisor OS and all of my work is done in contextual VMs, which each run their own instance of Firefox.
      - qu4z-2 8y ago
        You can also run multiple profiles in parallel, using something like firefox --no-remote --profile-manager I have that as an alias in bash, and a shortcut on my Windows desktop.
- weaksauce 8y ago
  not sure if you are looking for one but I have an extension that I wrote because I am similar to you and always had a hard time finding the tab I wanted. You might find it useful: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabist/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabist/ Source code: https://github.com/fiveNinePlusR/tabist https://github.com/fiveNinePlusR/tabist

Tomato/tomato. I don’t understand how people browse the web with more than 4 or 5 tabs open at the same time.

by hbosch 8y ago

Tomato/tomato. I don’t understand how people browse the web with more than 4 or 5 tabs open at the same time.

You never have more than 5 tabs open at the same time? You’re probably the minority and you probably have learned to do that because the tabs on top put these constraints on you. You would likely browse the web very differently if you had TST. Give it a try.

gbear605 8y ago
I also work in this way. I use tabs as my “working memory” for whatever my current project is. Having fewer tabs helps keep me on track working on a single topic. When I’m done with that task, it helps me transition by having closed all the tabs. When I want to save pages in the long term, I use bookmarks.
- mclehman 8y ago
  I use TST to supplement my working memory. I'm usually working within a particular subtree of all my (way too many) tabs. I probably still have more tabs in such a subtree than most people, but the same idea applies: the subtree keeps my focus on a single topic, and when I finish I can either collapse the subtree (my default) or close it entirely. What I find invaluable is the super quick ramp-up after context switching, especially if whatever pulled me away turned out to be more work/time than expected.
- petepete 8y ago
  It's odd that so many people confuse the roles of tabs and bookmarks. Perhaps it's a sign that the bookmark UX isn't good (or prevalent) enough. I generally have four pinned tabs open for email, Slack and Trello, plus another five related to what I'm working on.
  - jehlakj 8y ago
    I disagree. It’s the poor history UX that’s the problem. Get rid of tabs altogether and show the history on the left side. Or if you like fuzzy searching, look them up in the extension store.
    - petepete 8y ago
      My history is too messy, I often flit to sites for a couple of seconds and backtrack. Tabs make lots of sense, windows let me organise them into groups of things I'm currently working on. That's all sensible. Anything I come across that I think might be useful to my future self, I bookmark it. Again, working with the provided functionality. Sensible. When people have 200 tabs open and can't remember what's where, that's what puzzles me. I've seen people flick through dozens of tabs looking for a piece of documentation they saw yesterday afternoon. We already have the tools that make browsing and researching efficient. People just need to learn to use them.
      - jehlakj 8y ago
        I’ve been using an extension that orders tabs by MRU and it has my history baked in. I don’t even use tabs anymore on my text editors as I found that it’s unnecessary if you have fuzzy searching that lists the files in MRU order as suggestions. The problem with bookmarks for most of us is that users don’t typically manage their bookmarks and delete the links they don’t need.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - jplayer01 8y ago
    I'm not confusing anything. Tabs let me switch to different projects incredibly quickly. Bookmarks just don't work.
    - gbear605 8y ago
      Bookmarks have a great ux for it: save all open tabs to a bookmark folder, open all bookmarks in a folder
seqizz 8y ago
That's a habit. I've been using TST for some time and this "no useless tabs" policy in my brain will not seem to change.
gergi 8y ago
The minority on HN, maybe. Definitely not to the general public. The general user is almost certainly not using more than 1 tab at any time.

kakarot 8y ago

I have about 400-500 open tabs spread between three browsers on three systems which I'm using simultaneously. At least on my phone, Firefox Focus has helped immensely.

gitgud 8y ago
Why though? Is it all in the same context? I can't stand 10's of tabs let alone 100's!!
- kakarot 8y ago
  Each instance of firefox has its own context. One is unsafe browsing, one is personal browsing, one is development-related browsing, a la Qubes. I used to have a problem with messy, unnavigable bookmarks so now I keep my bookmarks lean and rely on tabs to hold pages I may only need for a month or two at most. It's pretty quick to navigate to a tab with Ctrl+L
  - mthoms 8y ago
    How do you create different "instances" of Firefox on the desktop? Or are you just talking about different windows?
    - kakarot 8y ago
      I run a hypervisor OS and all of my work is done in contextual VMs, which each run their own instance of Firefox.
    - qu4z-2 8y ago
      You can also run multiple profiles in parallel, using something like firefox --no-remote --profile-manager I have that as an alias in bash, and a shortcut on my Windows desktop.
weaksauce 8y ago
not sure if you are looking for one but I have an extension that I wrote because I am similar to you and always had a hard time finding the tab I wanted. You might find it useful: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabist/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabist/ Source code: https://github.com/fiveNinePlusR/tabist https://github.com/fiveNinePlusR/tabist