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Is that a lot? I think I've got Firefox up to 3500, indeed I mentioned this when I went to a meetup hosted by Mozilla, and they said that few people use more t

Is that a lot? I think I've got Firefox up to 3500, indeed I mentioned this when I went to a meetup hosted by Mozilla, and they said that few people use more than 14. I think some of the tab tools start to make it unstable, but the root issue is that it'd be good to clear down browser tabs often.

Veen 5y ago
When you have this many tabs, do you actively manage them or even have any idea what they contain. How do you find the information you need amongst 3000+ tabs. Isn't it annoying to have to shuffle through lots of windows with lots of tabs? I start to lose track after a dozen or so.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- zeristor 5y ago
  Because I can. Hacker News facilitates me opening scores of tabs a day, that and not being able to find the tab I need means duplicating it; although the browser now serves me up with the original one. I tend to open a new window for a new line of work, so the tabs are over 40 or so windows. The limit used to be the bowser crashing, or me forgetting to reopen history and so relinquishing the interesting things. My point is that I’d greatly appreciate keeping this down. I’m currently down to 800 or so, I think the tab history tool crashes Firefox, without it it could go a lot higher. ADHD can creep up on you
  - joekunin 5y ago
    The OneTab extension has done great things for my tab organization, might be of interest to you as well .
  - silon42 5y ago
    I've started on my own vertical tabs addon that can handle many thousands of tabs. Still work in progress...
- detaro 5y ago
  once it gets to the thousands it breaks down, but in my experience spatial memory + pattern matching on favicons works surprisingly well to navigate a large number of tabs.
milesvp 5y ago
I just don’t understand how anyone could have less than 14 tabs open at any time. Just using a search engine requires at least 4 at a time, and I’ve often got four or five searches going at any time. And then there’s at least a half dozen communication tabs. Even when I declare browser bankruptcy and close whole windows dedicated to some topic, I don’t think I can get my total count below 14. I mean, I get that my workflow is unique, but I’m apparently truly out of touch with typical browser usage.
- mattlondon 5y ago
  I regularly have only one or two at once. When I am done with a tab, I close it - this makes it very simple. Sure I might temporarily open 10 at once when searching, but many will be culled within the first 10-20 seconds of reading the page as either the info I need is not there, or I've found what I need so can close the rest. Occasionally when cross-referencing stuff I will go up to perhaps 5 or even 10 in extreme circumstances, but then - as before - I close the tab when I am done. For stuff I want to come back to "later" I just use a bookmark instead of just leaving it open. At work I tend to leave email chat and calendar open all day, but that is only an extra 3 tabs. In my experience - both at work and at home - it is better to concentrate on only a small number of things at once and try to work them through to completion (or as far as you can get) so you can just drop it from your head when you are done and not need to dedicate and brain energy on juggling all these differen "in-flight" tasks. I find it easier to concentrate and way more productive to finish a task and then move on, rather than context-switching every 2 minutes and wasting endless time hunting for "that tab with that thing I need" on it.
  - asymptosis 5y ago
    I have this approach too. When working, I might have up to 20 tabs open at a given time, but most of them are just there passively for things like monitoring and calendars. Some tips for people who are struggling with their tab count: * Always close all tabs at the end of the day. * Use different browser profiles for different types of task (eg work admin/emails/calendars/trello vs work-related documentation/search vs monitoring vs nonwork.) * If you notice you have enough tabs open that the browser needs to shrink or hide them, cycle through and cull a bunch. If needed, you can always find them again later, either just by searching for them or using your browser history.
_tom_ 5y ago
I had gotten up to 1000 a few times. Just never getting back to things to close them, mostly. It turned have to have huge performance impact, so I don't do it anymore. I got out of the habit a few years ago. I think since then, browser went to lazy loading of tabs on restart. If you think your system is running slow, cut the number of tabs to under 100, and try again. You may see a huge jump in performance. The one thing that helped me break the habit of not closing tabs was just installing a tab counter extension. Now, if I see it creeping up towards 100, I know it's time to clean house.
bashwizard 5y ago
I don't think I've ever had more than 10 tabs. Why on earth would anyone have more than a few open at the same time?
e3bc54b2 5y ago
> few people use more than 14 I can definitely say there is a selection bias at play here. Tab management as it is in major browsers by default sucks. At more than half dozen tabs, you start losing tab titles, basically playing "Where is waldo". When you go beyond a dozen tabs you can barely see the favicon. Any more and it becomes a game of "Concentration"[0]. When the experience is so horrible, no wonder people don't use more than 14 tabs at once. Give people vertical tabs with nested hierarchy and watch how quickly people go about operating 100+ tabs without losing sweat. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_(card_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_(card_game)

Veen 5y ago

When you have this many tabs, do you actively manage them or even have any idea what they contain. How do you find the information you need amongst 3000+ tabs. Isn't it annoying to have to shuffle through lots of windows with lots of tabs? I start to lose track after a dozen or so.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
zeristor 5y ago
Because I can. Hacker News facilitates me opening scores of tabs a day, that and not being able to find the tab I need means duplicating it; although the browser now serves me up with the original one. I tend to open a new window for a new line of work, so the tabs are over 40 or so windows. The limit used to be the bowser crashing, or me forgetting to reopen history and so relinquishing the interesting things. My point is that I’d greatly appreciate keeping this down. I’m currently down to 800 or so, I think the tab history tool crashes Firefox, without it it could go a lot higher. ADHD can creep up on you
- joekunin 5y ago
  The OneTab extension has done great things for my tab organization, might be of interest to you as well .
- silon42 5y ago
  I've started on my own vertical tabs addon that can handle many thousands of tabs. Still work in progress...
detaro 5y ago
once it gets to the thousands it breaks down, but in my experience spatial memory + pattern matching on favicons works surprisingly well to navigate a large number of tabs.

milesvp 5y ago

I just don’t understand how anyone could have less than 14 tabs open at any time. Just using a search engine requires at least 4 at a time, and I’ve often got four or five searches going at any time. And then there’s at least a half dozen communication tabs. Even when I declare browser bankruptcy and close whole windows dedicated to some topic, I don’t think I can get my total count below 14. I mean, I get that my workflow is unique, but I’m apparently truly out of touch with typical browser usage.

mattlondon 5y ago
I regularly have only one or two at once. When I am done with a tab, I close it - this makes it very simple. Sure I might temporarily open 10 at once when searching, but many will be culled within the first 10-20 seconds of reading the page as either the info I need is not there, or I've found what I need so can close the rest. Occasionally when cross-referencing stuff I will go up to perhaps 5 or even 10 in extreme circumstances, but then - as before - I close the tab when I am done. For stuff I want to come back to "later" I just use a bookmark instead of just leaving it open. At work I tend to leave email chat and calendar open all day, but that is only an extra 3 tabs. In my experience - both at work and at home - it is better to concentrate on only a small number of things at once and try to work them through to completion (or as far as you can get) so you can just drop it from your head when you are done and not need to dedicate and brain energy on juggling all these differen "in-flight" tasks. I find it easier to concentrate and way more productive to finish a task and then move on, rather than context-switching every 2 minutes and wasting endless time hunting for "that tab with that thing I need" on it.
- asymptosis 5y ago
  I have this approach too. When working, I might have up to 20 tabs open at a given time, but most of them are just there passively for things like monitoring and calendars. Some tips for people who are struggling with their tab count: * Always close all tabs at the end of the day. * Use different browser profiles for different types of task (eg work admin/emails/calendars/trello vs work-related documentation/search vs monitoring vs nonwork.) * If you notice you have enough tabs open that the browser needs to shrink or hide them, cycle through and cull a bunch. If needed, you can always find them again later, either just by searching for them or using your browser history.

_tom_ 5y ago

I had gotten up to 1000 a few times. Just never getting back to things to close them, mostly. It turned have to have huge performance impact, so I don't do it anymore. I got out of the habit a few years ago. I think since then, browser went to lazy loading of tabs on restart. If you think your system is running slow, cut the number of tabs to under 100, and try again. You may see a huge jump in performance. The one thing that helped me break the habit of not closing tabs was just installing a tab counter extension. Now, if I see it creeping up towards 100, I know it's time to clean house.

bashwizard 5y ago

I don't think I've ever had more than 10 tabs. Why on earth would anyone have more than a few open at the same time?

e3bc54b2 5y ago

> few people use more than 14 I can definitely say there is a selection bias at play here. Tab management as it is in major browsers by default sucks. At more than half dozen tabs, you start losing tab titles, basically playing "Where is waldo". When you go beyond a dozen tabs you can barely see the favicon. Any more and it becomes a game of "Concentration"[0]. When the experience is so horrible, no wonder people don't use more than 14 tabs at once. Give people vertical tabs with nested hierarchy and watch how quickly people go about operating 100+ tabs without losing sweat. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_(card_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_(card_game)