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I don't like this idea. I can see how others would though. I have a really hard time getting back into things. Any state a thing remembers is the opposite of

I don't like this idea. I can see how others would though. I have a really hard time getting back into things. Any state a thing remembers is the opposite of helpful. For example, I don't suspend laptops, I turn them off. It'd be a waste of time closing what I was doing before because I don't remember where I was earlier and it's easier to start over. Browser tabs are a current state. If I will want to use it multiple times, I use a bookmark. History is for the rare time I think "wait, I swear I read that earlier". It isn't just computing, I forget where I was in books and games sometimes and start over too. I can't be the only one.

safety1st 3y ago
I feel like I start to lose focus when I have more than a few tabs open. When I see people with dozens of tabs open I get a little panicky. I want to focus on the task at hand and if I want to recall an old site I'll use bookmarks and history for that, not bloat my active session state.
- b112 3y ago
  Uh. Afraid to say this, but I've had more than 1000 tabs open. It's useful too. One time I remembered doing something, found the tab. Sure, it was a 6 year old tab, but it was helpful.
  - doubled112 3y ago
    This doesn't sound too much different than my garage, really. Just junk and half finished projects piled up. That might be useful some day. toss I get why it'd be useful, and stretching the capabilities like that means that browsers get more and more useful and efficient. It just doesn't work for me, and that's alright. If you can open 1000 tabs, my 10 are no problem!
  - philsnow 3y ago
    I periodically take firefox's recovery.jsonlz4 and pipe it through a bunch of jq to export it as a datestamped bookmarks-$(date ...).org file. Right now I have 15 windows and 5351 tabs. Then I close all but the windows I have actually looked at in the last month.
    - b112 3y ago
      Neat idea. With how lame Google search is, this is handy when looking for something already found.
    - throwaway48476 3y ago
      I once had ~40k tabs.
cryptonector 3y ago
Relationally the only difference between a "tab", "history", and a "bookmark" is a column that tells you what kind it is.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
  Kinda but not really. I expect a tab to stay in memory, at least in virtual memory, and not need to hit the server if it's in the background for a while and then I click on it again, unlike history or bookmarks. I expect history to not be loaded in memory, it would be a waste of memory. I expect bookmarks to show up in search. Searching history is different, history has a ton of useless garbage in it. "Bookmark" means "When I type this, show this one URL before all the other ones that seem relevant".
  - cryptonector 3y ago
    All browsers use SQLite3 DBs for this stuff. History is not "loaded into memory" -- it's in the SQLite3 DB, which has a page cache, so some of it might be in memory, but the amount of memory dedicated to the page cache is fixed, so you need not worry about it. > I expect bookmarks to show up in search. Searching history is different, history has a ton of useless garbage in it. There is truly no difference except that some URIs are bookmarked (and maybe also in recent history) and some are not. Either way searching these is just a SQL query against the SQLite3 DB. You really need not worry about the efficiency of the search -- it's fast enough. The table(s) that store these things have enough metadata to enable the kinds of searches you might want to do. Among such metadata is "this is a bookmark" and "this is not a bookmark". > "Bookmark" means "When I type this, show this one URL before all the other ones that seem relevant". That doesn't preclude treating it not that differently from history. You really need not worry about those details. Also, a "bookmark" is more than that: it also has a name, it may be in a folder, it may be in the bookmark toolbar, it may have tags to help you search for it, etc.
- aaplok 3y ago
  If they serve the same purpose, doesn't that open the possibility to use one of them for something else? I'm also in the group that never keeps more than 10 tabs open, much fewer usually. The idea of having all my bookmarks displayed in a long sequence of tabs sounds horrific to me personally. It would just be an overwhelming amount of information. I would love it if bookmarks and history were easier to search and retrieve. Having them displayed in a thousand tabs on my screen constantly not so much.

safety1st 3y ago

I feel like I start to lose focus when I have more than a few tabs open. When I see people with dozens of tabs open I get a little panicky. I want to focus on the task at hand and if I want to recall an old site I'll use bookmarks and history for that, not bloat my active session state.

b112 3y ago
Uh. Afraid to say this, but I've had more than 1000 tabs open. It's useful too. One time I remembered doing something, found the tab. Sure, it was a 6 year old tab, but it was helpful.
- doubled112 3y ago
  This doesn't sound too much different than my garage, really. Just junk and half finished projects piled up. That might be useful some day. toss I get why it'd be useful, and stretching the capabilities like that means that browsers get more and more useful and efficient. It just doesn't work for me, and that's alright. If you can open 1000 tabs, my 10 are no problem!
- philsnow 3y ago
  I periodically take firefox's recovery.jsonlz4 and pipe it through a bunch of jq to export it as a datestamped bookmarks-$(date ...).org file. Right now I have 15 windows and 5351 tabs. Then I close all but the windows I have actually looked at in the last month.
  - b112 3y ago
    Neat idea. With how lame Google search is, this is handy when looking for something already found.
  - throwaway48476 3y ago
    I once had ~40k tabs.

cryptonector 3y ago

Relationally the only difference between a "tab", "history", and a "bookmark" is a column that tells you what kind it is.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
Kinda but not really. I expect a tab to stay in memory, at least in virtual memory, and not need to hit the server if it's in the background for a while and then I click on it again, unlike history or bookmarks. I expect history to not be loaded in memory, it would be a waste of memory. I expect bookmarks to show up in search. Searching history is different, history has a ton of useless garbage in it. "Bookmark" means "When I type this, show this one URL before all the other ones that seem relevant".
- cryptonector 3y ago
  All browsers use SQLite3 DBs for this stuff. History is not "loaded into memory" -- it's in the SQLite3 DB, which has a page cache, so some of it might be in memory, but the amount of memory dedicated to the page cache is fixed, so you need not worry about it. > I expect bookmarks to show up in search. Searching history is different, history has a ton of useless garbage in it. There is truly no difference except that some URIs are bookmarked (and maybe also in recent history) and some are not. Either way searching these is just a SQL query against the SQLite3 DB. You really need not worry about the efficiency of the search -- it's fast enough. The table(s) that store these things have enough metadata to enable the kinds of searches you might want to do. Among such metadata is "this is a bookmark" and "this is not a bookmark". > "Bookmark" means "When I type this, show this one URL before all the other ones that seem relevant". That doesn't preclude treating it not that differently from history. You really need not worry about those details. Also, a "bookmark" is more than that: it also has a name, it may be in a folder, it may be in the bookmark toolbar, it may have tags to help you search for it, etc.
aaplok 3y ago
If they serve the same purpose, doesn't that open the possibility to use one of them for something else? I'm also in the group that never keeps more than 10 tabs open, much fewer usually. The idea of having all my bookmarks displayed in a long sequence of tabs sounds horrific to me personally. It would just be an overwhelming amount of information. I would love it if bookmarks and history were easier to search and retrieve. Having them displayed in a thousand tabs on my screen constantly not so much.