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What exactly is the thought process behind having so many tabs open? For example, I close tabs when I am done with a site and / or when I can't read the site ti

What exactly is the thought process behind having so many tabs open? For example, I close tabs when I am done with a site and / or when I can't read the site title on the tabs any more.

dx87 7y ago
My wife leaves all of her tabs open, but it's not for any specific reason. If she opens a new tab and goes to a website, the browser will just switch to the tab that's already on that website instead of fetching the website again.
- webmobdev 7y ago
  > ... the browser will just switch to the tab that's already on that website ... Which browser?
  - eppsilon 7y ago
    Safari does this
  - Drdrdrq 7y ago
    Firefox has that feature (configurable).
CathedralBorrow 7y ago
> For example, I close tabs when I am done with a site I also do this, but my definition of done is very flexible and blurry.
- webmobdev 7y ago
  I meant, close it immediately or just bookmark, tag and close it for later.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 7y ago
    "Bookmark, tag, and close" loses active state and requires a full page refresh. It also loses the history (where it was opened from). Bookmarks are useful, but they're not the same thing as tabs.
  - CathedralBorrow 7y ago
    I don't do any bookmarking or tagging, so either it's an open tab or something I can dig up in the history. So I tend to keep tabs open if I think there's a chance I might need to refer to it soonish. Or I just forget them after my focus moves on to something else.
tokamak-teapot 7y ago
What’s the thought process behind closing them? Using tree style tabs I have a forest of tabs. I am working with lots of ‘web apps’ (currently mainly the AWS console) and closing tabs would mean having to go and find the particular resources every time I want to work with them. I probably hit each of around 50 tabs - across two or three windows - an average of 20 times today. Then there were dozens of ephemeral tabs too.
- webmobdev 7y ago
  > What’s the thought process behind closing them? - Why keep a site open when you are done with it? - Too many tabs and it gets difficult and irritating to find and open the site you want. - Have never needed to keep many, many sites open in the first place.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 7y ago
    Not the person you're replying to, but may as well answer since I also use tree-style tabs similarly. > - Why keep a site open when you are done with it? Why assume you're done with it? I have a number of tabs just for Grafana dashboards I'm monitoring. Re-finding the particular configuration from the home page every time would be annoying, bookmarks would require reloading the page (and thus re-running the slow queries that happen on load instead of on data update), etc. > - Too many tabs and it gets difficult and irritating to find and open the site you want. That's what tree-style tabs solves. Tabs are a hierarchy, just like bookmarks or folders normally are. It's much easier to navigate. > - Have never needed to keep many, many sites open in the first place. I've got email, calendar, a bunch of Grafana tabs, plus a few datasheets, a schematic, Jira, Confluence, and Github. And that's just for work, for news I tend to open articles in tabs with HN comments in child tabs and then go through & read them in sequence, but I keep work & non-work in different windows.
lnenad 7y ago
For some they're something that I check daily so I just focus then refresh, and for some I keep them open thinking it's something I am going to revisit and read some day.
Izkata 7y ago
Another Tree Style Tabs user here, I'm not really satisfied with the other explanations, so: With TST and Auto Tab Discard, tabs have become self-organized bookmarks for me. I simply don't use actual bookmarks anymore, and have open tabs for each site I regularly visit, with subtrees for any stray thought. I'm up to around 500 tabs across 3 windows. Maybe a dozen root trees. Youtube, Android docs, HN, Reddit, etc, for example. Because opening links in a new tab creates a child tab in the tree, they're automatically well-organized in a way that follows my thoughts, collapsible when I'm done with one for the moment, and rearrangeable if I don't like where they were put in the tree. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-discard/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc...

What exactly is the thought process behind having so many tabs open? For example, I close tabs when I am done with a site and / or when I can't read the site title on the tabs any more.

dx87 7y ago

My wife leaves all of her tabs open, but it's not for any specific reason. If she opens a new tab and goes to a website, the browser will just switch to the tab that's already on that website instead of fetching the website again.

webmobdev 7y ago
> ... the browser will just switch to the tab that's already on that website ... Which browser?
- eppsilon 7y ago
  Safari does this
- Drdrdrq 7y ago
  Firefox has that feature (configurable).

CathedralBorrow 7y ago

> For example, I close tabs when I am done with a site I also do this, but my definition of done is very flexible and blurry.

webmobdev 7y ago
I meant, close it immediately or just bookmark, tag and close it for later.
- SAI_Peregrinus 7y ago
  "Bookmark, tag, and close" loses active state and requires a full page refresh. It also loses the history (where it was opened from). Bookmarks are useful, but they're not the same thing as tabs.
- CathedralBorrow 7y ago
  I don't do any bookmarking or tagging, so either it's an open tab or something I can dig up in the history. So I tend to keep tabs open if I think there's a chance I might need to refer to it soonish. Or I just forget them after my focus moves on to something else.

tokamak-teapot 7y ago

What’s the thought process behind closing them? Using tree style tabs I have a forest of tabs. I am working with lots of ‘web apps’ (currently mainly the AWS console) and closing tabs would mean having to go and find the particular resources every time I want to work with them. I probably hit each of around 50 tabs - across two or three windows - an average of 20 times today. Then there were dozens of ephemeral tabs too.

webmobdev 7y ago
> What’s the thought process behind closing them? - Why keep a site open when you are done with it? - Too many tabs and it gets difficult and irritating to find and open the site you want. - Have never needed to keep many, many sites open in the first place.
- SAI_Peregrinus 7y ago
  Not the person you're replying to, but may as well answer since I also use tree-style tabs similarly. > - Why keep a site open when you are done with it? Why assume you're done with it? I have a number of tabs just for Grafana dashboards I'm monitoring. Re-finding the particular configuration from the home page every time would be annoying, bookmarks would require reloading the page (and thus re-running the slow queries that happen on load instead of on data update), etc. > - Too many tabs and it gets difficult and irritating to find and open the site you want. That's what tree-style tabs solves. Tabs are a hierarchy, just like bookmarks or folders normally are. It's much easier to navigate. > - Have never needed to keep many, many sites open in the first place. I've got email, calendar, a bunch of Grafana tabs, plus a few datasheets, a schematic, Jira, Confluence, and Github. And that's just for work, for news I tend to open articles in tabs with HN comments in child tabs and then go through & read them in sequence, but I keep work & non-work in different windows.

lnenad 7y ago

For some they're something that I check daily so I just focus then refresh, and for some I keep them open thinking it's something I am going to revisit and read some day.

Izkata 7y ago

Another Tree Style Tabs user here, I'm not really satisfied with the other explanations, so: With TST and Auto Tab Discard, tabs have become self-organized bookmarks for me. I simply don't use actual bookmarks anymore, and have open tabs for each site I regularly visit, with subtrees for any stray thought. I'm up to around 500 tabs across 3 windows. Maybe a dozen root trees. Youtube, Android docs, HN, Reddit, etc, for example. Because opening links in a new tab creates a child tab in the tree, they're automatically well-organized in a way that follows my thoughts, collapsible when I'm done with one for the moment, and rearrangeable if I don't like where they were put in the tree. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-discard/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc...