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I've wanted a similar thing for a very long time. In effect, an infinite web browser that remembers everything. Rather than 'surfing' the web it would be more

I've wanted a similar thing for a very long time. In effect, an infinite web browser that remembers everything. Rather than 'surfing' the web it would be more like mapping it out and exploring it, with more than just your memory to return to. I like the idea of a vertical tab bar on the side, and I think if the user interface were done right, one where the tabs of things which interest you never actually 'close' (closing a tab would be equivalent to dismissing something as irrelevant or uninteresting) but the list of tabs just continues growing, scrolling off the top of the screen but recallable (and searchable) at a moments notice. It would be major rethinking of how a browser works and what it does and it would possibly get confusing with things like web apps (shoehorning applications into a document presentation system bites us again). I imagine lots of people would presume a proposal like this, keeping everything you ever browse or at least a very significant subset of it, as slightly insane... but that just makes it more alluring to me.

walterbell 12y ago
Would you be willing to run a dedicated home server+storage for this purpose, e.g. Dell T20 or Lenovo TS140 ($300) + 4-6 disks in RAID1 config? It could run ESXi / KVM / Xen, e.g. FreeNAS in one VM, knowledge base in another. For UI prototyping, some options are Qt/Webkit, a browser extension, or http://breach.cc/ http://breach.cc/
innguest 12y ago
Yes, this. When I say I regularly accumulate close to 1000 open tabs on Firefox (I use the Tree Style Tab plugin to put them on a column to the left) people think I'm crazy, but I just think it's a better way to recall what I was doing and go back and position myself in time with regards to what I was reading and what I will read next. In my mind, I should only close tabs I want nothing to do with, and I keep open the stuff I'd like to revisit at some point. The fact that Firefox keeps open pages in memory is incidental and I don't let it affect my flow. Every day I crash my Firefox and reopen it with the 1000 tabs again (that's the only way to make Firefox understand I want the tabs loaded, not the content) to keep on browsing as keeping it open for long stresses the GC (I assume) making it sluggish to use. So yes, I think you and I see "surfing the web" in a different way. I've tried organizing myself with Bookmarks (but then you get lost in folders and categorizing), Pinboard (but I never go there to search for things), Evernote (I never search there either) and so on. Those solutions are not natural to me. If something is not in front of my face, I'll forget it. That's why I want to have a running collection of all the tabs/pages/notes I care about and it should be there at all times, organizable like the plugin I mentioned, but without taking RAM. Here's an interesting article by a philosopher I enjoy. He argues you and I are "horizontal organizers": http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/light/organization_port.php http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/light/organization_...

walterbell 12y ago

Would you be willing to run a dedicated home server+storage for this purpose, e.g. Dell T20 or Lenovo TS140 ($300) + 4-6 disks in RAID1 config? It could run ESXi / KVM / Xen, e.g. FreeNAS in one VM, knowledge base in another. For UI prototyping, some options are Qt/Webkit, a browser extension, or http://breach.cc/ http://breach.cc/

innguest 12y ago

Yes, this. When I say I regularly accumulate close to 1000 open tabs on Firefox (I use the Tree Style Tab plugin to put them on a column to the left) people think I'm crazy, but I just think it's a better way to recall what I was doing and go back and position myself in time with regards to what I was reading and what I will read next. In my mind, I should only close tabs I want nothing to do with, and I keep open the stuff I'd like to revisit at some point. The fact that Firefox keeps open pages in memory is incidental and I don't let it affect my flow. Every day I crash my Firefox and reopen it with the 1000 tabs again (that's the only way to make Firefox understand I want the tabs loaded, not the content) to keep on browsing as keeping it open for long stresses the GC (I assume) making it sluggish to use. So yes, I think you and I see "surfing the web" in a different way. I've tried organizing myself with Bookmarks (but then you get lost in folders and categorizing), Pinboard (but I never go there to search for things), Evernote (I never search there either) and so on. Those solutions are not natural to me. If something is not in front of my face, I'll forget it. That's why I want to have a running collection of all the tabs/pages/notes I care about and it should be there at all times, organizable like the plugin I mentioned, but without taking RAM. Here's an interesting article by a philosopher I enjoy. He argues you and I are "horizontal organizers": http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/light/organization_port.php http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/light/organization_...