4 ms·

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 c

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
      - srean 8y ago
        And then what happens to the trajectory of clicks that I followed to land on the page that was open in the tab ? Rhetorical question of course. With an open tab I have that information and can go back and forth up the path. Its very useful context to have when I revisit the tab. In my line of work I research many things every day. Firefox open tabs have been a godsend. I literally have 900 to 1200 open at any given time
        chii 8y ago
        The browser ought to remember the history of a tab when saving that tab into a bookmark folder (think VM save state). Photoshop has work flow like this - you can split the undo history into a tree like structure (to a degree, it's not infinite).
        srean 8y ago
        +1 indeed
    - nomel 8y ago
      There were some nice Firefox extensions that supported bookmarking and reloading tab trees. Bookmarking a tree would result in folders, so the whole structure was preserved. Bookmarks can definitely work, but yeah, a flat list can't. I think a better approach would be something like a mind-map.
  - konart 8y ago
    People does not confuse roles. It's just that: 1) What goes to bookmarks rarely goes out. 2) usually I and many other people have a few dozens at least of 'related to what I'm working on'. Like a few documentation pages for this, a few documentation pages for that, ten SO pages, ten blog articles on the same topic linked from SO etc. Plus some tabs unrelated to work, but the ones you absolutetly want to visit later and finish reading or something and don't have the time to put them into something like Things or Bear.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    The UX of bookmarks is far less ephemeral than the UX of tabs. I rarely go above 30 or 40 tabs in TST, and those tabs almost never live longer than a day, with one or two exceptions that I use several times a day every day. Adding and deleting bookmarks at this frequency would be a massive hassle.
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.

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
    - srean 8y ago
      And then what happens to the trajectory of clicks that I followed to land on the page that was open in the tab ? Rhetorical question of course. With an open tab I have that information and can go back and forth up the path. Its very useful context to have when I revisit the tab. In my line of work I research many things every day. Firefox open tabs have been a godsend. I literally have 900 to 1200 open at any given time
      - chii 8y ago
        The browser ought to remember the history of a tab when saving that tab into a bookmark folder (think VM save state). Photoshop has work flow like this - you can split the undo history into a tree like structure (to a degree, it's not infinite).
        srean 8y ago
        +1 indeed
  - nomel 8y ago
    There were some nice Firefox extensions that supported bookmarking and reloading tab trees. Bookmarking a tree would result in folders, so the whole structure was preserved. Bookmarks can definitely work, but yeah, a flat list can't. I think a better approach would be something like a mind-map.
- konart 8y ago
  People does not confuse roles. It's just that: 1) What goes to bookmarks rarely goes out. 2) usually I and many other people have a few dozens at least of 'related to what I'm working on'. Like a few documentation pages for this, a few documentation pages for that, ten SO pages, ten blog articles on the same topic linked from SO etc. Plus some tabs unrelated to work, but the ones you absolutetly want to visit later and finish reading or something and don't have the time to put them into something like Things or Bear.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  The UX of bookmarks is far less ephemeral than the UX of tabs. I rarely go above 30 or 40 tabs in TST, and those tabs almost never live longer than a day, with one or two exceptions that I use several times a day every day. Adding and deleting bookmarks at this frequency would be a massive hassle.

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.