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It seems like many people basically use open browser tabs as history/bookmarks. If they don't close it, they want to remember it forever. I believe browsers ha

• magicalhippo 2y ago
  Firefox does this when shutting down and starting back up. Tabs get "frozen" and "thawed" upon activation after startup. This is superior to bookmarks, as the server respose is saved along with scroll position etc. I've long wished I could actively trigger this similar to making a bookmark. Bonus if they saved some embeddings too so I could search the contents of the saved pages.
  • Justsignedup 2y ago
    It also shows that people want transient bookmarks. They bookmark a few things they care about, but the rest is bookmarks for the next week or month, then they don't need it anymore.
  • SilasX 2y ago
    lol what? Every Firefox tab I’ve ever switched to after restarting has done a full, across-the-wire reload.
    • DaoVeles 2y ago
      Same here. This is only on one laptop that I use for rubbish but the full reload takes a few minutes.
      • bruce511 2y ago
        Might be OS dependant? My Firefox does not reload the page, it's just "there". I have to refresh to get an update of the page (I use it for forums). I'm on Windows if that makes any difference.
        • iggldiggl 2y ago
          I think it rather depends on the page (some pages with lots of dynamically generated content might mark themselves as no-cache/no-store), and in any case if you don't use a tab long enough, sooner or later it'll be evicted from the browser cache.
        • DaoVeles 2y ago
          Maybe, just running on bog standard Linux Mint. Nothing fancy.
    • throwaway211 2y ago
      cache_control http header of the site
      • SilasX 2y ago
        No. Every site, even HN and static sites. Remember, we’re taking about a Firefox restart, not the back button.
    • magicalhippo 2y ago
      Sites like Facebook or Reddit do indeed do a full reload, but most sites I frequent do not. Nice to be able to pick up where I left. If I want updated content I just hit F5.
      • SilasX 2y ago
        We’re talking about coming from a restart, not the back button.
        • magicalhippo 2y ago
          Yes, that's what I was talking about too. Like I said I have to hit F5 to get updated content after a restart on most sites.
  • MichaelRo 2y ago
    Well sometimes I kill the browser (Firefox, Chrome) rather than closing it because upon starting it again it will automatically recreate the tabs. Where otherwise I lose everything. And I do keep a text file with interesting links, so I don't have to keep 100+ tabs open. Seems much easier to me to skimp through a text file looking for something I remembered seeing than using bookmarks.
    • bayindirh 2y ago
      There's an extension called "Tab Session Manager". Give it a look. It allows you to save, edit sync sessions, and name them. It's good.
      • magicalhippo 2y ago
        Yeah I lost my sessions a few times (crashes and just randomly), been using this plugin since. Worked great.
    • Vinnl 2y ago
      You can toggle the setting to do it even if you close your browser the normal way: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-restore-my-tabs-last-time#w_restore-the-previous-session-every-time-you-open-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-restore-my-tab...
    • kvmet 2y ago
      If you close it normally, restart it, and then do "reopen last closed tab" (cmd/ctrl+shift+t) it will open the entire last window you had open. Press multiple times to open all previous windows.
• g15jv2dp 2y ago
  > On wider screens, a left sidebar might open by default with tabs stacked vertically. Edge already does that. (Well, you can make it do that.) I don't know about other browsers.
  • j_bum 2y ago
    Arc browser as well
  • dredmorbius 2y ago
    Tree-style Tabs: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...> I literally cannot live^W browse without it.
• _trampeltier 2y ago
  The original classic Opera browser (around 2000) could do it. It was also a feature from Vivaldi since the the project was launched.
• colimbarna 2y ago
  Yes please! Firefox used to have a fantastic feature where I could crash it, and it would have a tab that contained my previous session within it. It would be there forever, between restarts and restores. I could have a kind of chain of sessions. Sometimes, I would deliberately crash the browser because there were too many, but I still had this bunch of tabs which I wanted to be nearly active. At some point, they deleted the feature - you get one chance to restore your previous session, and after that poof - gone. (I think that decision was pure evil on their part - who goes around and decides to delete a users data? And what's wrong with letting me decide how much of my drive I want to dedicate to storing open tabs? But whatever.) The experience made me realise that what you describe is exactly what I'm trying to do. I have pages I care about. I want them findable when I get back to it, even if that means three years hence. And there are other pages which I just visited once, like a news article, or which occupied me for three weeks, like documentation for a problem I've now solved. The act of closing a tab is a communication to the web browser. I wish it would listen to it. I could also do with a searchable, browsable list of open tabs. I was recently searching for a car. Then I bought one. So I need to go back and find all the tabs about cars and close them. I want a fully interactive window like an oldschool history window that lets me find all my open tabs about cars and close them, no matter which window they're in - unless I see that it's my car's user manual or my service schedule, in which case maybe I want to keep it open for the next five years. On the other hand, when I learnt about % in the searchbox, it was a gamechanger. Finally I could find and reuse the tab that is open, instead of the way by default Firefox prioritises search results over open tabs. (The other thing I would like, is something in mobile Firefox that tells me how many tabs I have open. I hate the cute infinity sign. What's the point? Because their designer couldn't handle the idea of a slightly smaller font each time an order of magnitude is exceeded? Why not let me live with the costs of my actions? Also, an easier way to manage tabs on Firefox mobile. But maybe just better tab management in general.)
  • bfdm 2y ago
    Managing my tabs in Firefox mobile is such a pain in the ass. Couldn't agree more with needing a big improvement here. Even simple things like putting already open tabs at the bottom of the list when typing in the address bar makes things more painful than it should be. I almost always want the matching open tab, put that first!
• kalleboo 2y ago
  > It seems like many people basically use open browser tabs as history/bookmarks For me I'd say I use it as a To Do list. Open tabs are things I mean to get to, and when I'm done with it I will close it. Bookmarks are things I might need at some later date.
  • borbtactics 2y ago
    Chrome and Firefox’s reading list is perfect for this purpose
    • ralferoo 2y ago
      It's more hassle than middle-click to open something I plan to read in another tab.
    • kalleboo 2y ago
      I tried using Safari's reading list for this long ago, but it's too out-of-sight, out-of-mind and stuff went in there to be forgotten about. Tabs and windows are in my face cluttering up my screen the whole time, begging to be finished.
• kgeist 2y ago
  A friend of mine has 2000 tabs open. He says he uses it not only for history, but also the tabs remember the position of video playback in movies, series, etc. so he can continue from where he left.
  • prmoustache 2y ago
    Sounds overkill: I am fairly sure all streaming services I have been using already keep position and in the first page have a list of shows you have started and might want to continue watching... My preferred youtube frontend, freetube, also does that.
  • j45 2y ago
    If the tabs are remotely organized (by window), and you use a plugin to change the title of the window (it shows up with a title then in window managers), it's pretty much an instant on and context switch if you need to switch between projects, and leave them in a good stopping point, and can pick them up instantly from where you left off. I often have used separate browsers for this. One for each project, one for personal, etc. Can work well too.
• squarefoot 2y ago
  > Maybe if they just made history more obvious then that would change the equation. Session history presented as a list that loads the session in a new window if mid-clicked and/or expanded if left-clicked from which each tab could be imported in the current one would solve this problem. On Firefox there's a function to bookmark all tabs which roughly does a similar job but it's less immediate.
• dheera 2y ago
  > So they automatically unload I despise this behavior, they also love to unload the tab with my mobile boarding pass that I so neatly prepared at home, and attempt to reload it when I'm trying to fumble in front of the TSA dude, and inevitably crap out because the session cookie has expired. They should at least maintain a "last known good" screenshot.
• mozarella 2y ago
  OneTab and TabSessionManager addons fill these roles nicely on firefox. OneTab for your readinglist/todo-list tabs TabSessionManager for your organized topical tabs See my comment : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41158725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41158725
• marci 2y ago
  Tabs aren't history, nor bookmarks: - they keep sessions (a)live (audio/video, chat, where you stop reading) - they can keep some or all of the history context ("how did I get here?") - they can keep some of the browsing context ("what else was I looking at, what other tabs are around this one?") - they are a filter. Every useless site, popup, get's into the history (>"If they don't close it, they want to remember it forever.") - they (at least on desktop) have better ux than bookmarks and history (they're always there)
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • jauntywundrkind 2y ago
    In spite of your conntrarian phrasing you've kind of only sold me on tabs being a more advanced hypermedia bookmark than the simple bookmarks we've been given. > they keep sessions (a)live (audio/video, chat, where you stop reading) I'd also note that at 7500 tabs your computer almost certainly is not keeping those sessions alive. It's stunning how far we can get but wow, watching Chrome over the years claw it's way towards being fast to load & staying responsive, in spite of being many 100's of tabs in on a mid-range 201X phone was an incredible saga of improving software architecture. It got better and better. There's whole means of backgrounding & persisting pages (and of preloading new pages) that's just amazing.
    • lynguist 2y ago
      > in spite of being many 100's of tabs in on a mid-range 201X phone was an incredible saga of improving software architecture Those tabs were and are just screenshots, and reload when clicked, you could realistically not have more than around 5 open at the same time without reloading.
    • marci 2y ago
      > In spite of your conntrarian phrasing you've kind of only sold me on tabs being a more advanced hypermedia bookmark than the simple bookmarks we've been given. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I understand your phrasing. > I'd also note that at 7500 tabs your computer almost certainly is not keeping those sessions alive The person I was responding to was not talking specifically about the article, but "many people". And some people may use the tabs for one, more, or none of the reasons I listed. I was not trying to sell anything. I don't even think that tabs are a good product, only the best so far, with regard to those considerations.
• Izkata 2y ago
  You're almost there. To get what I and others have, take everything you described then add: * Ability to unload tabs and prevent tabs from unloading, by domain (youtube) or picking from the context menu for one-offs. (Auto Tab Discard) (Unless it's changed since I got this addon, the built-in discarded tabs won't unload tabs, it only does anything when the browser is restarted, preventing all but the current tabs from loading) * The left sidebar is actually a tree, where links opened in a new tab are automatically children of the tab they opened from. The whole thing becomes self-organizing with context, and the parent tabs can be expanded/collapsed. (Tree Style Tab) * The left sidebar also auto-collapses to ~3 favicons in width (userChrome.css manual modification, originally copied from something shared online), so it works fine even without a wider screen. * Addon for vim-style controls (Tridactyl), which in addition to everything else includes a way to search and jump to tabs by matching title and url. I'm somewhere around 1500-2000 and it has replaced my bookmarks.
• j45 2y ago
  It's also about having instant on/switch over. Firefox does have an excellent setup for multiple spaces, groups of tabs, etc. I tried once on my old 2018 i9 macbook, and was able to get to 2100 tabs without needing a plugin to unload a tab. Having tabs organized in groups for projects is really useful. Especially if it can be paired with a window manager to keep groups of tabs ready to go between multiple spaces/workspaces.
• j45 2y ago
  There is a plugin for internet archive that can auto-submit what you surf to them.
• chemmail 2y ago
  SO you mean IOS safari.
• Log_out_ 2y ago
  Save it + state as a bookmark sorted by days.allow nn to sort it topological " your obsession with frogs" finally on return to the topic "search frog" allow for a revisit of the past im chronologoc order giltered by topic similar to a search result.
• aequitas 2y ago
  There was this concept a few years back which had history timelines and all, called Refresh. But nothing came from it afaik: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17638477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17638477