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> Finally, there are very few cases where you should have a large number of Chrome tabs open anyway. Multi-tasking is impossible (the human brain simply doesn't

> Finally, there are very few cases where you should have a large number of Chrome tabs open anyway. Multi-tasking is impossible (the human brain simply doesn't support it) and rapid context-switches are inefficient. I agree that the human brain doesn't task switch effectively, but that is exactly why I want to have many tabs open. In the case of reading Hacker News, I will go through the main page once, opening each article and comment page in a new tab, then will use that as a to-read list. If I am researching how to do a task, I will open have several pages open for documentation, stack overflow posts, bug reports, etc. These are open not for the sake of multitasking, but in order to reduce the amount of working memory I need. For example, if a post mentions that a particular workaround may be required, then I want to keep that tab open until I have verified that that workaround is not needed in my case.

rossjudson 6y ago
Sounds like you want bookmarks with state/tagging.
- 0-O-0 6y ago
  Are there any solutions with good UX for this workflow?
fouric 6y ago
I guess I'm making two claims here: (1) you should only open tabs for the task you're currently working on and (2) that very few tasks require large numbers of tabs. Fine, maybe it's more then a dozen, but the graph of "number of tabs used by a task" versus "frequency of that number occurring" is an inverse exponential (e.g. most tasks require 1 tab, fewer require 2, even fewer require 3, etc.), and I've never noticed myself actually needing more than...probably 20 tabs to complete a single task before. > In the case of reading Hacker News... This isn't a "task" - you're reading a bunch of completely separate articles, one at a time. You're consuming, not producing/processing/working on a task/problem - and each element of consumption is separate than all of the others. > If I am researching how to do a task... I understand and agree with this definition and workflow! This is how tabs were designed to be used. However, I haven't ever seen a common task (for programmers - who have even more demanding requirements than the general populace) that requires a "large" number of tabs. I guess that's kind of vague and I can always change the number, but really, think about it - how often does a task require more than a dozen tabs? More than two dozen tabs? Just for fun, I opened every frontpage article (as of the time I accessed it - whoops, should have used Wayback HN or something) in Chrome. All 30 articles took 3.9 GB RAM, and adding all 30 pages of comments consumed another 300 MB, so 4.2 GB. total.
- afiori 6y ago
  I disagree with the first claim: > (1) you should only open tabs for the task you're currently working on In good part because there are no other simple "read later" alternatives in a browser. Something that would be an option would be a special single use kind of bookmark that gets deleted once you reopen it. I am on the extreme side of keeping too many tabs open, part of the reason is that they offer a very simple and unique functionality in the browser (it was my reason between other to switch to Firefox, it could easily handles a few hundred tabs (with some restarts from about:profiles))

rossjudson 6y ago

Sounds like you want bookmarks with state/tagging.

0-O-0 6y ago
Are there any solutions with good UX for this workflow?

fouric 6y ago

I guess I'm making two claims here: (1) you should only open tabs for the task you're currently working on and (2) that very few tasks require large numbers of tabs. Fine, maybe it's more then a dozen, but the graph of "number of tabs used by a task" versus "frequency of that number occurring" is an inverse exponential (e.g. most tasks require 1 tab, fewer require 2, even fewer require 3, etc.), and I've never noticed myself actually needing more than...probably 20 tabs to complete a single task before. > In the case of reading Hacker News... This isn't a "task" - you're reading a bunch of completely separate articles, one at a time. You're consuming, not producing/processing/working on a task/problem - and each element of consumption is separate than all of the others. > If I am researching how to do a task... I understand and agree with this definition and workflow! This is how tabs were designed to be used. However, I haven't ever seen a common task (for programmers - who have even more demanding requirements than the general populace) that requires a "large" number of tabs. I guess that's kind of vague and I can always change the number, but really, think about it - how often does a task require more than a dozen tabs? More than two dozen tabs? Just for fun, I opened every frontpage article (as of the time I accessed it - whoops, should have used Wayback HN or something) in Chrome. All 30 articles took 3.9 GB RAM, and adding all 30 pages of comments consumed another 300 MB, so 4.2 GB. total.

afiori 6y ago
I disagree with the first claim: > (1) you should only open tabs for the task you're currently working on In good part because there are no other simple "read later" alternatives in a browser. Something that would be an option would be a special single use kind of bookmark that gets deleted once you reopen it. I am on the extreme side of keeping too many tabs open, part of the reason is that they offer a very simple and unique functionality in the browser (it was my reason between other to switch to Firefox, it could easily handles a few hundred tabs (with some restarts from about:profiles))