12 ms·

> As someone who has thousands of tabs open This behavior always confuses me. To what end? Have you ever derived any value from a tab you chose not to close?

by axbytg 6y ago

saagarjha 6y ago
Yes–I go back and read them occasionally. By keeping things open I get frequent reminders to look at things and sometimes I do.
- rohan1024 6y ago
  I used to do this now I just search again and occasionally I will bookmark a page that is too valuable to miss in future searches. This keeps my bookmarks clean.
Firerouge 6y ago
Chrome only preserves browsing history for 90 days. Keeping tabs open can work around that limitation
- samb1729 6y ago
  Without even bothering to check, this seems like it can't possibly be true. You are surely not saying that the billions of Chrome users worldwide have no browsing history from September or earlier, right?
  - brw 6y ago
    "Your History page shows the webpages you've visited on Chrome in the last 90 days."[0] Google's My Activity[1] stores everything though. [0] https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95589 https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95589 [1] https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity
    - saurik 6y ago
      Damn, that's ridiculously evil... why the hell am I only able to get basic functionality through a cloud service?!
  - ossopite 6y ago
    That's absolutely right, at least in terms of the Chrome browser history. I always found this limitation astounding. I use the History Trends Unlimited extension to work around this (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/history-trends-unlimited/pnmchffiealhkdloeffcdnbgdnedheme?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/history-trends-unl...) With 5 years of history the stats page is a bit slow to load but the search feature works great and it can export to CSV
wutbrodo 6y ago
Hm, I'm kind of confused by your perspective here. Do you only have a single thread of tasks you're doing at any given time on your machine, all of whose resources are torn down and rebuilt from scratch when needed? I use my current laptop both for work and personally, and in my personal workspaces alone, I have at least half a dozen browser windows with ~20 tabs representing research that I'm doing or a task that I'm organizing; everything from gift-buying to medical devices for a family issue to building a new workout routine for the pandemic. You can rack up tons of relevant tabs pretty quickly in these scenarios, and there's really no advantage to closing them in any well-managed environment (ie one that has non-rudimentary window management and a browser/extension that handles idle tabs with negligible ongoing resource use). I probably have hundreds of "productive" tabs open, and that's before even getting to tabs that are serving as an "L1 cache" version of a read-it-later service. And all of this comes with extremely quick clean-up; once I buy the gift/finalize the routine/purchase the item, it's trivial to close the entire window for that task.
- masa331 6y ago
  Having hundreds or thousands open tabs also confuses me and always seems like a mess to me. The way i work: I mostly work on a one thing at a time. For that i can have probably at max 40 tabs open. Once it gets past some threshold(i don't recognize or remember what's in them) i tend to start to close the obsolete ones. If there is something i find useful i bookmark it. If there is something i think i would like to read in future i also bookmark it. Once the work is done i close all the tabs. In general i like my tabs closed, it brings peace to my mind.
  - franga2000 6y ago
    I don't think I go into thousands, but easily accumulate a few 100 tabs. The way I work, I rarely have a task truly done in one go. Besides various side projects, I work on multiple websites for multiple clients and constantly need to put one on hold and wait for feedback, so I go work on another one. If I expect feedback withing a ~2 day period, it really doesn't make sense for me to close the related tabs. Not only does it save time when picking up the task again, but helps me reconstruct my train of thought without having to take notes. The way I think of it is kind of like swap memory. Instead of wasting effort saving to disk and verifying the saved data (taking notes), I chuck the data somewhere it isn't in the way (a new virtual desktop) so I can pick it up later. In fact, this is exactly what happens with the tabs at the system level. Since I'm constantly running out of ram and have a stupid amount of swap space set up, my OS gladly swaps the relevant browser processes and unswap the relevant set.
mrmonkeyman 6y ago
It's their planning and todo solution. I'd bookmark things and make notes in an actual agenda but to each his own I guess.
blackrock 6y ago
I open a new window to research a specific topic. Then I open up all the links on sub tabs. This encloses all my research for this subject in one window. Often times I have upwards of 10+ windows opened. Since some of the work spans over several days or weeks. I also take screenshots of relevant information. Which gets automatically labeled by date and time into a screenshot folder, and sub-sorted into months.
- tveyben 6y ago
  This is where I miss to be able to name each group-of-tabs (the window) with a name so I can manage (eg when alt-tab’ing) quickly. So window ‘topic-1’ have 10 tabs relating to ‘topic-1’ and the property ‘topic-1’ is visible in my WM. Is this possible (I have not -yet - searched ‘enough’ for this functionality...)?
  - noisy_boy 6y ago
    I use Window Titler[0] for this because I use the same workflow of opening a new window for each "topic". [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/window-titler/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/window-titler...
  - catchmeifyoucan 6y ago
    Try Amna. https://getamna.com https://getamna.com. You can do this per chrome window and bubble the tasks up to a task.
  - tveyben 6y ago
    I am very happy to have shared my thoughts here (and received good feedback and suggestions!), but the best is that it finally made me look into this need - and I am not the first (big surprise :-) It turns out that just very recently exactly what I need was made possible in Chrome (currently only "experimental") just set this flag [1]. I especially like that it's possible without the need of third party SW. This page [2] is what alerted my attention to the solution. NB.: It does make me wonder why this feature have not existed until now as it seems so obvious, I mean ever since the introduction of the TABbed interface in browsers (which started pre 2000 IIRC) the (over-) usage pattern of tabs existed. Anyway - even if I have missed something pre-existing I am now extremely happy to be able to name my TABS in Chrome! [1] chrome://flags/#window-naming [2] https://winaero.com/how-to-name-a-window-in-google-chrome/ https://winaero.com/how-to-name-a-window-in-google-chrome/
eitland 6y ago
> Have you ever derived any value from a tab you chose not to close? Not GP but of course! Why would we close something we are going back to?
imtringued 6y ago
I derive close to zero value from bookmarks. The only value they provide is that they appear in the address bar during searches. They are organized in a linear fashion, they require constant maintenance and they are also not immediately accessible often requiring you to open a separate window. Worst of all even if you choose to do something as stupid as manage bookmarks you will now have to have to manage both tabs and bookmarks at the same time. Tabs? They are easy to organize, easily accessible because they are always visible and they are powerful enough to completely remove the need for bookmarks which makes using bookmarks always inferior because of the downsides of bookmarks. Now lets get to the actual point: >Have you ever derived any value from a tab you chose not to close? I close tabs that I don't need eventually, bookmarks just keep accumulating because there is an easy method to add them, but actually finding or deleting bookmarks is a lot of effort.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- opan 6y ago
  It helps if you use tags more than folders for bookmarks, that way you can have a page marked as "dogs, computers", another as "dogs, pizza" and then filter to dogs to see both. It also helps (in firefox) if you know the special symbols you can put in the address bar for filtering. * for normal bookmarks, I think + for tags, and % works for open tabs. Follow them with a space and your keyword. I've been using qutebrowser mainly for a couple months now, and I find the way bookmarks and quickmarks fit into the standard open or open in new tab dialogue feels very powerful. I often am just hitting O to open in new tab, typing a few characters, and picking a result from bookmarks or history. Searching and going to a URL happens there too. I try to use either descriptive names like "guix-bug-issue" for quickmarks so they show up when I type any of those bits (bug and issue intentionally redundant so if I think to search either, it comes up), or I use very shorts strings like "lfm" for my last.fm profile. In the case of these shorter ones, you get the added advantage of being able to go there without looking. If you type an exact quickmark name in the box and hit enter, it goes straight there, you don't have to wait and look over the suggestions in the box.

> As someone who has thousands of tabs open This behavior always confuses me. To what end? Have you ever derived any value from a tab you chose not to close?

by axbytg 6y ago

> As someone who has thousands of tabs open This behavior always confuses me. To what end? Have you ever derived any value from a tab you chose not to close?

saagarjha 6y ago

Yes–I go back and read them occasionally. By keeping things open I get frequent reminders to look at things and sometimes I do.

rohan1024 6y ago
I used to do this now I just search again and occasionally I will bookmark a page that is too valuable to miss in future searches. This keeps my bookmarks clean.

Firerouge 6y ago

Chrome only preserves browsing history for 90 days. Keeping tabs open can work around that limitation

samb1729 6y ago
Without even bothering to check, this seems like it can't possibly be true. You are surely not saying that the billions of Chrome users worldwide have no browsing history from September or earlier, right?
- brw 6y ago
  "Your History page shows the webpages you've visited on Chrome in the last 90 days."[0] Google's My Activity[1] stores everything though. [0] https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95589 https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95589 [1] https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity
  - saurik 6y ago
    Damn, that's ridiculously evil... why the hell am I only able to get basic functionality through a cloud service?!
- ossopite 6y ago
  That's absolutely right, at least in terms of the Chrome browser history. I always found this limitation astounding. I use the History Trends Unlimited extension to work around this (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/history-trends-unlimited/pnmchffiealhkdloeffcdnbgdnedheme?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/history-trends-unl...) With 5 years of history the stats page is a bit slow to load but the search feature works great and it can export to CSV

wutbrodo 6y ago

Hm, I'm kind of confused by your perspective here. Do you only have a single thread of tasks you're doing at any given time on your machine, all of whose resources are torn down and rebuilt from scratch when needed? I use my current laptop both for work and personally, and in my personal workspaces alone, I have at least half a dozen browser windows with ~20 tabs representing research that I'm doing or a task that I'm organizing; everything from gift-buying to medical devices for a family issue to building a new workout routine for the pandemic. You can rack up tons of relevant tabs pretty quickly in these scenarios, and there's really no advantage to closing them in any well-managed environment (ie one that has non-rudimentary window management and a browser/extension that handles idle tabs with negligible ongoing resource use). I probably have hundreds of "productive" tabs open, and that's before even getting to tabs that are serving as an "L1 cache" version of a read-it-later service. And all of this comes with extremely quick clean-up; once I buy the gift/finalize the routine/purchase the item, it's trivial to close the entire window for that task.

masa331 6y ago
Having hundreds or thousands open tabs also confuses me and always seems like a mess to me. The way i work: I mostly work on a one thing at a time. For that i can have probably at max 40 tabs open. Once it gets past some threshold(i don't recognize or remember what's in them) i tend to start to close the obsolete ones. If there is something i find useful i bookmark it. If there is something i think i would like to read in future i also bookmark it. Once the work is done i close all the tabs. In general i like my tabs closed, it brings peace to my mind.
- franga2000 6y ago
  I don't think I go into thousands, but easily accumulate a few 100 tabs. The way I work, I rarely have a task truly done in one go. Besides various side projects, I work on multiple websites for multiple clients and constantly need to put one on hold and wait for feedback, so I go work on another one. If I expect feedback withing a ~2 day period, it really doesn't make sense for me to close the related tabs. Not only does it save time when picking up the task again, but helps me reconstruct my train of thought without having to take notes. The way I think of it is kind of like swap memory. Instead of wasting effort saving to disk and verifying the saved data (taking notes), I chuck the data somewhere it isn't in the way (a new virtual desktop) so I can pick it up later. In fact, this is exactly what happens with the tabs at the system level. Since I'm constantly running out of ram and have a stupid amount of swap space set up, my OS gladly swaps the relevant browser processes and unswap the relevant set.

mrmonkeyman 6y ago

It's their planning and todo solution. I'd bookmark things and make notes in an actual agenda but to each his own I guess.

blackrock 6y ago

I open a new window to research a specific topic. Then I open up all the links on sub tabs. This encloses all my research for this subject in one window. Often times I have upwards of 10+ windows opened. Since some of the work spans over several days or weeks. I also take screenshots of relevant information. Which gets automatically labeled by date and time into a screenshot folder, and sub-sorted into months.

tveyben 6y ago
This is where I miss to be able to name each group-of-tabs (the window) with a name so I can manage (eg when alt-tab’ing) quickly. So window ‘topic-1’ have 10 tabs relating to ‘topic-1’ and the property ‘topic-1’ is visible in my WM. Is this possible (I have not -yet - searched ‘enough’ for this functionality...)?
- noisy_boy 6y ago
  I use Window Titler[0] for this because I use the same workflow of opening a new window for each "topic". [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/window-titler/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/window-titler...
- catchmeifyoucan 6y ago
  Try Amna. https://getamna.com https://getamna.com. You can do this per chrome window and bubble the tasks up to a task.
- tveyben 6y ago
  I am very happy to have shared my thoughts here (and received good feedback and suggestions!), but the best is that it finally made me look into this need - and I am not the first (big surprise :-) It turns out that just very recently exactly what I need was made possible in Chrome (currently only "experimental") just set this flag [1]. I especially like that it's possible without the need of third party SW. This page [2] is what alerted my attention to the solution. NB.: It does make me wonder why this feature have not existed until now as it seems so obvious, I mean ever since the introduction of the TABbed interface in browsers (which started pre 2000 IIRC) the (over-) usage pattern of tabs existed. Anyway - even if I have missed something pre-existing I am now extremely happy to be able to name my TABS in Chrome! [1] chrome://flags/#window-naming [2] https://winaero.com/how-to-name-a-window-in-google-chrome/ https://winaero.com/how-to-name-a-window-in-google-chrome/

eitland 6y ago

> Have you ever derived any value from a tab you chose not to close? Not GP but of course! Why would we close something we are going back to?

imtringued 6y ago

I derive close to zero value from bookmarks. The only value they provide is that they appear in the address bar during searches. They are organized in a linear fashion, they require constant maintenance and they are also not immediately accessible often requiring you to open a separate window. Worst of all even if you choose to do something as stupid as manage bookmarks you will now have to have to manage both tabs and bookmarks at the same time. Tabs? They are easy to organize, easily accessible because they are always visible and they are powerful enough to completely remove the need for bookmarks which makes using bookmarks always inferior because of the downsides of bookmarks. Now lets get to the actual point: >Have you ever derived any value from a tab you chose not to close? I close tabs that I don't need eventually, bookmarks just keep accumulating because there is an easy method to add them, but actually finding or deleting bookmarks is a lot of effort.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
opan 6y ago
It helps if you use tags more than folders for bookmarks, that way you can have a page marked as "dogs, computers", another as "dogs, pizza" and then filter to dogs to see both. It also helps (in firefox) if you know the special symbols you can put in the address bar for filtering. * for normal bookmarks, I think + for tags, and % works for open tabs. Follow them with a space and your keyword. I've been using qutebrowser mainly for a couple months now, and I find the way bookmarks and quickmarks fit into the standard open or open in new tab dialogue feels very powerful. I often am just hitting O to open in new tab, typing a few characters, and picking a result from bookmarks or history. Searching and going to a URL happens there too. I try to use either descriptive names like "guix-bug-issue" for quickmarks so they show up when I type any of those bits (bug and issue intentionally redundant so if I think to search either, it comes up), or I use very shorts strings like "lfm" for my last.fm profile. In the case of these shorter ones, you get the added advantage of being able to go there without looking. If you type an exact quickmark name in the box and hit enter, it goes straight there, you don't have to wait and look over the suggestions in the box.