Whaaaa??? Bullshit! I use Tree Style Tabs and boy do I have a secret for you. They can cure cancer tomorrow and "Nested Tab Hierarchy" would still be the best thing invented by mankind! (Only...
Exemplary
Whaaaa??? Bullshit!
I use Tree Style Tabs and boy do I have a secret for you. They can cure cancer tomorrow and "Nested Tab Hierarchy" would still be the best thing invented by mankind! (Only slightly exaggerating).
Why?
Tab nesting means you can have a hundred million of those critters open, and not give a fuck because you only see the 3 that are relevant at that moment.
Tab nesting means your context and even more important, your chain of thought is preserved, including all the branches it took. That means you can offload the state from your brain to your machine. You also get to offload the burden of remembering the failed paths, because they exist right there.
Nested tabs mean when you are finally done with something, you can close all the 33 tabs associated with it in single click. The zenith of pleasure in that single click is nonexistent without tab nesting.
Give it a try. Your mind will be freed. Come, redeem your mind and soul. Join us, in the holy pantheon of the Tree (Style Tabs)!
I would like to learn more about your Tree-based revelations, for my current tab usage is unclean and I want to leave those dastardly ways. How would I try out this Tree lifestyle for myself?
I would like to learn more about your Tree-based revelations, for my current tab usage is unclean and I want to leave those dastardly ways. How would I try out this Tree lifestyle for myself?
Install Tree Style Tabs extension, move it to right side (or leave it on left, up to you). There's bunch of customizations, see what fits your spiritual needs and be blessed.
Install Tree Style Tabs extension, move it to right side (or leave it on left, up to you). There's bunch of customizations, see what fits your spiritual needs and be blessed.
I haven't tried a tree style tabs extension but I've looked at the screenshots of them. I'm on a tiny laptop and screen space is at a premium. I'd really rather not concede 1/6ish of my screen...
I haven't tried a tree style tabs extension but I've looked at the screenshots of them. I'm on a tiny laptop and screen space is at a premium. I'd really rather not concede 1/6ish of my screen width to a tab management sidebar. Am I misunderstanding how that works? Traditional tabs are awful, but at least they're small and horizontal.
On most screens, vertical space is at far more of a premium than horizontal. This is really most of why I use TST (though the tree structure is a nice side benefit)—I want all those vertical...
On most screens, vertical space is at far more of a premium than horizontal. This is really most of why I use TST (though the tree structure is a nice side benefit)—I want all those vertical pixels to put content in, and almost always have wasted horizontal space next to the content I'm reading that is much better filled with useful UI elements. If your screen is small enough that horizontal space is also at a premium and you rarely have otherwise-wasted horizontal space, then yeah, TST (or other side-tabs extension) will typically spend more pixels on empty tab UI than the traditional tab bar at the top, and horizontal scrolling is of course much worse than vertical scrolling.
Maybe of note, though, is that you can toggle the tab sidebar with a keyboard shortcut (by default for TST it's F1), which you can't do with the top tab bar.
As another laptop-dweller, I can assure you it saves you more time and brain-bandwidth than it wastes the space. Horizontal tabs are useless beyond a dozen. On my usual work-day, I can easily go...
As another laptop-dweller, I can assure you it saves you more time and brain-bandwidth than it wastes the space. Horizontal tabs are useless beyond a dozen. On my usual work-day, I can easily go through couple dozen tabs, and always need about half dozen open for quick references. With TST everything is visible in one glance and click able, no need to hunt among the tiny logos of pages, not to mention when they all are same, because Jira and confluence share one (thanks, Atlassian).
Anyway, I have tab column on right side of my screen. After having it there for nearly 3 years now, I have come to realize it doesn't matter. Because vast majority of internet has broad white bars (if not ads) on the sides and the tab column rarely impedes on actual content.
This sounds like browser history, but different? I guess the question is why open tabs don't seamlessly merge into history as they age out? (I do close tabs, but I also use browser history a fair...
This sounds like browser history, but different? I guess the question is why open tabs don't seamlessly merge into history as they age out?
(I do close tabs, but I also use browser history a fair bit when I close them too soon.)
To anyone wanting to make a change, I make an extension called Queue that requires less effort to use than bookmarks if you just want to save links temporarily. If you get into the rhythm of using...
Exemplary
To anyone wanting to make a change, I make an extension called Queue that requires less effort to use than bookmarks if you just want to save links temporarily. If you get into the rhythm of using it instead of leaving tabs open, it's really nice. I've been using it constantly ever since I first came up with it.
And to the rest, you do your thing the way that works for you. Don't waste your brain cycles on worrying about how many tabs is too many.
I figured you would have stopped developing more new extensions by now given all the headaches that maintaining your old ones has caused you over the years. ;)
I figured you would have stopped developing more new extensions by now given all the headaches that maintaining your old ones has caused you over the years. ;)
This is cool! I'll try it out sometime. I've been using Tab Stash, OneTab before that. I like the former because it lets you export whatever you want in markdown, and the saved tabs are put in...
This is cool! I'll try it out sometime. I've been using Tab Stash, OneTab before that. I like the former because it lets you export whatever you want in markdown, and the saved tabs are put in bookmark folders which means I can always use the address bar to search for stuff.
Using RAM is not the same as wasting it. People complain a lot about Chrome "using up" all their available RAM (Firefox does it too but nobody seems to moan about that) but why else do you have...
Using RAM is not the same as wasting it.
People complain a lot about Chrome "using up" all their available RAM (Firefox does it too but nobody seems to moan about that) but why else do you have RAM? I paid for the damn stuff, I don't want it sitting there doing nothing!
I have swap space in case I need to offload browser processes into slower storage. I regularly don't close my browser (currently 17 tabs, usually more) while I'm editing video or 3D modelling and all that RAM all my open tabs are using? My operating system just... hands it over to the thing I'm actively doing. There's a little lag if I tab back as things load from disk, but it's only tiny.
Also, bookmarks vs tabs - most of the tabs I have open now are things I'm actively doing (or soon to be doing). Having them as bookmarks makes no sense - especially in the case of things where I have things sitting in shopping baskets, some sites don't remember your almost-purchases if you close the tab. A great deal of what I do with my browser is short-term and transitory and I don't tend to go back to things. I also use tabs as "to do" reminders - eg, I have a tab open about rice cookers, which is to remind me I need to look into rice cookers in more depth when I get the time. I have a wikipedia speedruns tab open because I have been enjoying that but once I'm bored of it I'll close the tab and probably never revisit the site again. Bookmarks just aren't visible enough to work like that.
Not counting the ones Firefox makes me have to create search shortcuts, I currently have 25 bookmarks - and I need to delete a few of those. They're almost all comics and I open the whole folder in the morning to read while I drink a cup of tea. 25 tabs of comic (on top of any already open tabs) sure uses up quite a lot of RAM..
I don't thinks it's hubris to suggest that in 2022, the average Firefox user is more technologically inclined in 2022. Most other people I know who still use Firefox are software developers or...
I don't thinks it's hubris to suggest that in 2022, the average Firefox user is more technologically inclined in 2022. Most other people I know who still use Firefox are software developers or work in an adjacent field.
Yep, it's why I prefer macOS's somewhat nebulous metric "memory pressure" as opposed to just raw physical memory usage often displayed on windows and many linux DEs. Raw physical memory usage is...
People complain a lot about Chrome "using up" all their available RAM (Firefox does it too but nobody seems to moan about that) but why else do you have RAM? I paid for the damn stuff, I don't want it sitting there doing nothing!
Yep, it's why I prefer macOS's somewhat nebulous metric "memory pressure" as opposed to just raw physical memory usage often displayed on windows and many linux DEs. Raw physical memory usage is really very misleading; an application can allocate a bunch of virtual memory, but if they rarely use it, it will all end up in swap eventually and be as good as free.
I honestly think a lot of RAM performance concerns is some kind of placebo; people are liable to attribute any hitch, any slowdown while their physical ram usage is near its maximum to RAM.
Fundementally the 'clear RAM' issue was a very real problem 30 years ago, when RAM was very small and disks were very slow. My first PC was pretty high end with a whopping 8 MB of RAM and 100 MB...
Fundementally the 'clear RAM' issue was a very real problem 30 years ago, when RAM was very small and disks were very slow.
My first PC was pretty high end with a whopping 8 MB of RAM and 100 MB of disk.
Storing something in RAM uses comparatively little electricity compared to the CPU cycles + internet bandwidth (i.e. upstream electricity usage) required to keep closing and reloading the same...
Storing something in RAM uses comparatively little electricity compared to the CPU cycles + internet bandwidth (i.e. upstream electricity usage) required to keep closing and reloading the same webpage from a bookmark.
I'll second this one. When I'm crawling around for answers, it's not uncommon for me to open 50+ tabs. Mostly because its a bit like a save spot before branching out further. It would be nicer if...
I'll second this one.
When I'm crawling around for answers, it's not uncommon for me to open 50+ tabs. Mostly because its a bit like a save spot before branching out further.
It would be nicer if I could have them organized in tree format, where the source tab is the parent.
Problem is browser bookmarks are kimda shit unless you meticulously tag them. Having a built-in indexer/crawler would be awesome. "Google, but limited to what I've bookmarked" would be a gamechanger for me.
I have used lot of different vertical tab extensions over the years, inclusing TST, and I actually prefer Sidebery to all the others I have tried. Don't get me wrong, the customization in TST is...
I have used lot of different vertical tab extensions over the years, inclusing TST, and I actually prefer Sidebery to all the others I have tried. Don't get me wrong, the customization in TST is unparalleled due to all the third party addons available for it. However, the base TST extension is actually somewhat lacking in features, so it can be a headache to get it, and all the addons you want, set up in the way you prefer. Whereas Sidebery sits in a nice middle ground, with a solid set of built-in features similar to TST's, as well as some of TST's most essential addons, so it doesn't require nearly as much fiddling with.
I poked at it briefly and it looks like it would be good if I hadn't already rice'd my setup for TST (does it still count as rice'ing if it isn't a desktop?). Seems like reasonable defaults and...
I poked at it briefly and it looks like it would be good if I hadn't already rice'd my setup for TST (does it still count as rice'ing if it isn't a desktop?). Seems like reasonable defaults and like it doesn't seem as fiddly as TST is. But, since I've already done the fiddling, there's no advantage to me swapping.
That's totally understandable. TST is definitely the ideal for power users, and once you have it configured exactly how you like it there is little reason to switch. About the only reason I can...
That's totally understandable. TST is definitely the ideal for power users, and once you have it configured exactly how you like it there is little reason to switch. About the only reason I can think of is if you really need the few features Sidebery has that TST doesn't. E.g. The per container proxy and user-agent switching actually comes in handy more often than you might think, especially for getting around paywalls that are geo-restricted or have exceptions in them for Googlebot.
Sidebery seems cool. But one thing that I need in my workflow is the ability to send whole trees of tabs from one Firefox Profile to another (e.g. through Firefox Sync). Can it do that?
Sidebery seems cool. But one thing that I need in my workflow is the ability to send whole trees of tabs from one Firefox Profile to another (e.g. through Firefox Sync).
It does use FF sync to be able to sync your tabs across different browser instances (or in case Firefox crashes). And it can send selected tabs to other windows, or any multi-account containers...
It does use FF sync to be able to sync your tabs across different browser instances (or in case Firefox crashes). And it can send selected tabs to other windows, or any multi-account containers you have set up. But I don't think it can send tabs to totally separate user profiles (AFAIK).
Out of curiosity, why are you using multiple user profiles instead of just setting up containers? They function similarly, but containers are way more convenient. And Sidebery even supports per-container proxy and user agent switching.
There is already a issue asking for exactly that ;) I’m using separate Profiles, because that is the only stable and predictable way I could find how to make sure to keep different Firefox windows...
I’ll look into it. There is already a issue asking for exactly that ;)
Huh... that's quite the unique workflow setup you have, and a very very strange FF issue indeed. I like the idea behind what you're doing with FF and Activities though, by having them linked and...
Huh... that's quite the unique workflow setup you have, and a very very strange FF issue indeed. I like the idea behind what you're doing with FF and Activities though, by having them linked and isolated like that.
Thanks. If you’re interested, the project picked up some steam by getting some other contributors (luckily, because I got to the limit of my abilities) and we’re currently reviewing version 0.3,...
Thanks. If you’re interested, the project picked up some steam by getting some other contributors (luckily, because I got to the limit of my abilities) and we’re currently reviewing version 0.3, which makes things a lot nicer.
10 is about the minimum that I need to do my daily work because everything I do is spread around a handful of online applications. I guess you could say that some of them are bookmarks, but they...
10 is about the minimum that I need to do my daily work because everything I do is spread around a handful of online applications.
I guess you could say that some of them are bookmarks, but they would be terrible as actual bookmarks because bookmarks do not store the state of a webpage and they lack the specific requirement of being transient and easy to get rid of when I am done with them.
That being said, for people with hundreds of tabs open, I assume you are starting a research project, are a programmer or likewise who needs to reference a ton of different documentation. Otherwise I fear for your mental health. Ah, who am I kidding, I fear for the researchers and programmers too. There’s obviously something wrong with all of us. 😺
Counterpoint: a tab is not a bookmark. It contains a good deal more state than just a URL, and with how stateful many modern web pages have gotten, that can be the difference between quickly...
Counterpoint: a tab is not a bookmark. It contains a good deal more state than just a URL, and with how stateful many modern web pages have gotten, that can be the difference between quickly referring back to whatever you had looked up and wondering WTF you had this page open/bookmarked for. (Example: you're at a specific spot in the middle of a Youtube video. If you don't take the extraordinary step of bookmarking a timestamped share link, loading the bookmark will lose your place.)
(I'll also concur with "ten tabs is not that many"; the "only wasted RAM is unused RAM" point is true, but significantly caveated by the fact that OSs aren't great at handling inter-application memory contention, and so you can have issues if you suddenly need a whole bunch of RAM for something more useful than keeping a giant pile of web page state immediately to hand.)
Anyway, I personally have a typical baseline of between zero and a half dozen tabs (on my work laptop, I have email, calendar, and IM open all the time), but it can easily spike to many dozens if I'm researching something thorny. I'm not bookmarking all the stuff I have open transiently for a temporary research project.
Many browsers/addons let you "hibernate" tabs that you barely use, imitating the 'favorite' functionality even further. I have a ton of tabs open, but I can't just close them due to them being a...
Many browsers/addons let you "hibernate" tabs that you barely use, imitating the 'favorite' functionality even further.
I have a ton of tabs open, but I can't just close them due to them being a mix of "this might be interesting in a week when I have time", "oh, I still need to send this to xyx" or them requiring an hour of undivided attention. In my experience, it's rarely problem of "just forgetting to close them", but it's too hard to shelf them in the "correct way". You'd have to organize your favs in a specific way and then also send some websites to friends and also put some of them in your long-term notes solution (which is browser-agnostic).
I've thought about using wallabag before to solve this "problem", but I feel like it would just become this unsurmountable pile of links aka backlog of doom that I'll just pile onto and never dare to touch again or it turns into work and I tell myself I have to 'work on 2 of those backlog links each day'. But at least it would be not an open tab anymore? :D
Anyone else not use bookmarks? I do for work because there's too many things to remember, but for personal I don't use them at all. I used to try to use them, but then I realized I never went back...
Anyone else not use bookmarks? I do for work because there's too many things to remember, but for personal I don't use them at all. I used to try to use them, but then I realized I never went back to places I bookmarked. The sites I visit regularly are easy to find with a quick search and I know the URL.
I'm also an aggressive tab closer. I like to start my work day by closing as many tabs as possible. I usually get it down under 8. I view each tab as a thing to click on to get to a different place. Usually they are works in progress or sites I use a hourly while I work.
Bookmarks are useful to me because I am always interested in obscure information and those are always going to be difficult to find on search engines. They are also great for finding your way to...
Bookmarks are useful to me because I am always interested in obscure information and those are always going to be difficult to find on search engines. They are also great for finding your way to things on the old web. If you don’t constantly update your website Google thinks you are dead and your info is useless, and you’ll basically never find it again without going to page 10+ of your search results.
Beside that, going through them later is a real nostalgic treat because you will find so much stuff you thought was important at the time and have completely forgotten about now.
I have my own solution, which is tied to KDE Plasma, but suits me (and apparently a few other people) very well – I created a wrapper for Firefox to make it Activity-aware (script is much more...
I have my own solution, which is tied to KDE Plasma, but suits me (and apparently a few other people) very well – I created a wrapper for Firefox to make it Activity-aware (script is much more complex and powerful nowadays, thanks to external contributions, see repo for the latest version)
In short: I am a heavy user of Activities in Plasma to separate different work environments or tasks. And in each (KDE Plasma) Activity my wrapper makes sure Firefox runs a separate (Firefox) Profile. That makes sure I always have only the tabs I need for that task/work environment.
(for a longer version, read the blog post)
P.S. I am using Tree-Style Tabs, but will take a look at Sidebery if it fits me better. I also tried OneTab before, but ultimately stopped because it was proprietary and it the workflow just did not suit me really well. I also use Pocket where I send pages I want to read later to (Wallabag is just as good, both have their +/-).
There’s currently a massive merge request that I’m currently looking to approve. It’s taking me a long time, since whoever wrote it is much more skilled than I am. But if you’re good at shell...
It’s taking me a long time, since whoever wrote it is much more skilled than I am. But if you’re good at shell scripting, please do go ahead and chime in! It would be much appreciated :)
Welp. I thought I was fine with 27 tabs open after hearing all the nightmare stories of folks with >50 at any given time. Then I checked my RAM usage, decided for most definitely no reason at all...
Welp. I thought I was fine with 27 tabs open after hearing all the nightmare stories of folks with >50 at any given time. Then I checked my RAM usage, decided for most definitely no reason at all I swear to follow the advice anyways, and now I have 6 tabs open and 4gb more available memory. How dare you make me change my habits!
I used an extension called Tab Wrangler on Chrome which archived unused tabs over a certain amount after a given time, which were stored on a handy list. You can whitelist tabs/domains that will...
I used an extension called Tab Wrangler on Chrome which archived unused tabs over a certain amount after a given time, which were stored on a handy list. You can whitelist tabs/domains that will never be archived. It is also available on Firefox.
If you're logged to Firefox Sync, it will sync your stored your tabs too.
I’m the type to keep maybe 8 tabs open per window max. Every email gets put into an archive folder unless it’s in an active conversation that I need to keep tabs on. Same general principal to...
I’m the type to keep maybe 8 tabs open per window max. Every email gets put into an archive folder unless it’s in an active conversation that I need to keep tabs on. Same general principal to physical mess, too. When not in use everything gets put away.
Whaaaa??? Bullshit!
I use Tree Style Tabs and boy do I have a secret for you. They can cure cancer tomorrow and "Nested Tab Hierarchy" would still be the best thing invented by mankind! (Only slightly exaggerating).
Why?
Tab nesting means you can have a hundred million of those critters open, and not give a fuck because you only see the 3 that are relevant at that moment.
Tab nesting means your context and even more important, your chain of thought is preserved, including all the branches it took. That means you can offload the state from your brain to your machine. You also get to offload the burden of remembering the failed paths, because they exist right there.
Nested tabs mean when you are finally done with something, you can close all the 33 tabs associated with it in single click. The zenith of pleasure in that single click is nonexistent without tab nesting.
Give it a try. Your mind will be freed. Come, redeem your mind and soul. Join us, in the holy pantheon of the Tree (Style Tabs)!
I would like to learn more about your Tree-based revelations, for my current tab usage is unclean and I want to leave those dastardly ways. How would I try out this Tree lifestyle for myself?
Install Tree Style Tabs extension, move it to right side (or leave it on left, up to you). There's bunch of customizations, see what fits your spiritual needs and be blessed.
I haven't tried a tree style tabs extension but I've looked at the screenshots of them. I'm on a tiny laptop and screen space is at a premium. I'd really rather not concede 1/6ish of my screen width to a tab management sidebar. Am I misunderstanding how that works? Traditional tabs are awful, but at least they're small and horizontal.
On most screens, vertical space is at far more of a premium than horizontal. This is really most of why I use TST (though the tree structure is a nice side benefit)—I want all those vertical pixels to put content in, and almost always have wasted horizontal space next to the content I'm reading that is much better filled with useful UI elements. If your screen is small enough that horizontal space is also at a premium and you rarely have otherwise-wasted horizontal space, then yeah, TST (or other side-tabs extension) will typically spend more pixels on empty tab UI than the traditional tab bar at the top, and horizontal scrolling is of course much worse than vertical scrolling.
Maybe of note, though, is that you can toggle the tab sidebar with a keyboard shortcut (by default for TST it's F1), which you can't do with the top tab bar.
As another laptop-dweller, I can assure you it saves you more time and brain-bandwidth than it wastes the space. Horizontal tabs are useless beyond a dozen. On my usual work-day, I can easily go through couple dozen tabs, and always need about half dozen open for quick references. With TST everything is visible in one glance and click able, no need to hunt among the tiny logos of pages, not to mention when they all are same, because Jira and confluence share one (thanks, Atlassian).
Anyway, I have tab column on right side of my screen. After having it there for nearly 3 years now, I have come to realize it doesn't matter. Because vast majority of internet has broad white bars (if not ads) on the sides and the tab column rarely impedes on actual content.
This sounds like browser history, but different? I guess the question is why open tabs don't seamlessly merge into history as they age out?
(I do close tabs, but I also use browser history a fair bit when I close them too soon.)
Sometime you want keep some tabs always at hand (some reference doc or something); it would be counter productive to have them auto close.
Browser history is linear. Nested tabs are branched and preserve their ancestry.
Wow, I've heard of Tree Style Tabs but never really tried it out before - this is excellent.
Is there anything similar for Chrome-based browsers?
I doubt it. Chrome just doesn't support necessary APIs. Thats another reason I'm pretty much locked into Firefox.
To anyone wanting to make a change, I make an extension called Queue that requires less effort to use than bookmarks if you just want to save links temporarily. If you get into the rhythm of using it instead of leaving tabs open, it's really nice. I've been using it constantly ever since I first came up with it.
And to the rest, you do your thing the way that works for you. Don't waste your brain cycles on worrying about how many tabs is too many.
I figured you would have stopped developing more new extensions by now given all the headaches that maintaining your old ones has caused you over the years. ;)
Ha, right. Haven't had many issues as of late thankfully. And I've been thinking of making another, too!
Every programmer is secretly a masochist (especially webdevs), I swear it must be true! :P
This is cool! I'll try it out sometime. I've been using Tab Stash, OneTab before that. I like the former because it lets you export whatever you want in markdown, and the saved tabs are put in bookmark folders which means I can always use the address bar to search for stuff.
Using RAM is not the same as wasting it.
People complain a lot about Chrome "using up" all their available RAM (Firefox does it too but nobody seems to moan about that) but why else do you have RAM? I paid for the damn stuff, I don't want it sitting there doing nothing!
I have swap space in case I need to offload browser processes into slower storage. I regularly don't close my browser (currently 17 tabs, usually more) while I'm editing video or 3D modelling and all that RAM all my open tabs are using? My operating system just... hands it over to the thing I'm actively doing. There's a little lag if I tab back as things load from disk, but it's only tiny.
Also, bookmarks vs tabs - most of the tabs I have open now are things I'm actively doing (or soon to be doing). Having them as bookmarks makes no sense - especially in the case of things where I have things sitting in shopping baskets, some sites don't remember your almost-purchases if you close the tab. A great deal of what I do with my browser is short-term and transitory and I don't tend to go back to things. I also use tabs as "to do" reminders - eg, I have a tab open about rice cookers, which is to remind me I need to look into rice cookers in more depth when I get the time. I have a wikipedia speedruns tab open because I have been enjoying that but once I'm bored of it I'll close the tab and probably never revisit the site again. Bookmarks just aren't visible enough to work like that.
Not counting the ones Firefox makes me have to create search shortcuts, I currently have 25 bookmarks - and I need to delete a few of those. They're almost all comics and I open the whole folder in the morning to read while I drink a cup of tea. 25 tabs of comic (on top of any already open tabs) sure uses up quite a lot of RAM..
That's because Firefox users are either aware of why using RAM is good. /unjustified hubris
I don't thinks it's hubris to suggest that in 2022, the average Firefox user is more technologically inclined in 2022. Most other people I know who still use Firefox are software developers or work in an adjacent field.
Yep, it's why I prefer macOS's somewhat nebulous metric "memory pressure" as opposed to just raw physical memory usage often displayed on windows and many linux DEs. Raw physical memory usage is really very misleading; an application can allocate a bunch of virtual memory, but if they rarely use it, it will all end up in swap eventually and be as good as free.
I honestly think a lot of RAM performance concerns is some kind of placebo; people are liable to attribute any hitch, any slowdown while their physical ram usage is near its maximum to RAM.
Fundementally the 'clear RAM' issue was a very real problem 30 years ago, when RAM was very small and disks were very slow.
My first PC was pretty high end with a whopping 8 MB of RAM and 100 MB of disk.
Storing something in RAM uses comparatively little electricity compared to the CPU cycles + internet bandwidth (i.e. upstream electricity usage) required to keep closing and reloading the same webpage from a bookmark.
Edit: The only "wasted" RAM is unused RAM.
I'll second this one.
When I'm crawling around for answers, it's not uncommon for me to open 50+ tabs. Mostly because its a bit like a save spot before branching out further.
It would be nicer if I could have them organized in tree format, where the source tab is the parent.
Problem is browser bookmarks are kimda shit unless you meticulously tag them. Having a built-in indexer/crawler would be awesome. "Google, but limited to what I've bookmarked" would be a gamechanger for me.
I'm a big fan of Tree Style Tabs.
I have used lot of different vertical tab extensions over the years, inclusing TST, and I actually prefer Sidebery to all the others I have tried. Don't get me wrong, the customization in TST is unparalleled due to all the third party addons available for it. However, the base TST extension is actually somewhat lacking in features, so it can be a headache to get it, and all the addons you want, set up in the way you prefer. Whereas Sidebery sits in a nice middle ground, with a solid set of built-in features similar to TST's, as well as some of TST's most essential addons, so it doesn't require nearly as much fiddling with.
Huh... I haven't heard of it, I'll have to take a look.
If you give it a try, let me know what you think of it... even if you hate it. I like hearing other people's opinions on such things. :)
I poked at it briefly and it looks like it would be good if I hadn't already rice'd my setup for TST (does it still count as rice'ing if it isn't a desktop?). Seems like reasonable defaults and like it doesn't seem as fiddly as TST is. But, since I've already done the fiddling, there's no advantage to me swapping.
That's totally understandable. TST is definitely the ideal for power users, and once you have it configured exactly how you like it there is little reason to switch. About the only reason I can think of is if you really need the few features Sidebery has that TST doesn't. E.g. The per container proxy and user-agent switching actually comes in handy more often than you might think, especially for getting around paywalls that are geo-restricted or have exceptions in them for Googlebot.
Sidebery seems cool. But one thing that I need in my workflow is the ability to send whole trees of tabs from one Firefox Profile to another (e.g. through Firefox Sync).
Can it do that?
It does use FF sync to be able to sync your tabs across different browser instances (or in case Firefox crashes). And it can send selected tabs to other windows, or any multi-account containers you have set up. But I don't think it can send tabs to totally separate user profiles (AFAIK).
Out of curiosity, why are you using multiple user profiles instead of just setting up containers? They function similarly, but containers are way more convenient. And Sidebery even supports per-container proxy and user agent switching.
I’ll look into it.There is already a issue asking for exactly that ;)I’m using separate Profiles, because that is the only stable and predictable way I could find how to make sure to keep different Firefox windows in different KDE Plasma Activities. I tried other approaches before, and this one seems the most reliable.
Huh... that's quite the unique workflow setup you have, and a very very strange FF issue indeed. I like the idea behind what you're doing with FF and Activities though, by having them linked and isolated like that.
Thanks. If you’re interested, the project picked up some steam by getting some other contributors (luckily, because I got to the limit of my abilities) and we’re currently reviewing version 0.3, which makes things a lot nicer.
2000 is about where I draw the line. It's not even using an awful lot of ram.
This post was brought to you by the firefox gang.
10 is about the minimum that I need to do my daily work because everything I do is spread around a handful of online applications.
I guess you could say that some of them are bookmarks, but they would be terrible as actual bookmarks because bookmarks do not store the state of a webpage and they lack the specific requirement of being transient and easy to get rid of when I am done with them.
That being said, for people with hundreds of tabs open, I assume you are starting a research project, are a programmer or likewise who needs to reference a ton of different documentation. Otherwise I fear for your mental health. Ah, who am I kidding, I fear for the researchers and programmers too. There’s obviously something wrong with all of us. 😺
Counterpoint: a tab is not a bookmark. It contains a good deal more state than just a URL, and with how stateful many modern web pages have gotten, that can be the difference between quickly referring back to whatever you had looked up and wondering WTF you had this page open/bookmarked for. (Example: you're at a specific spot in the middle of a Youtube video. If you don't take the extraordinary step of bookmarking a timestamped share link, loading the bookmark will lose your place.)
(I'll also concur with "ten tabs is not that many"; the "only wasted RAM is unused RAM" point is true, but significantly caveated by the fact that OSs aren't great at handling inter-application memory contention, and so you can have issues if you suddenly need a whole bunch of RAM for something more useful than keeping a giant pile of web page state immediately to hand.)
Anyway, I personally have a typical baseline of between zero and a half dozen tabs (on my work laptop, I have email, calendar, and IM open all the time), but it can easily spike to many dozens if I'm researching something thorny. I'm not bookmarking all the stuff I have open transiently for a temporary research project.
Many browsers/addons let you "hibernate" tabs that you barely use, imitating the 'favorite' functionality even further.
I have a ton of tabs open, but I can't just close them due to them being a mix of "this might be interesting in a week when I have time", "oh, I still need to send this to xyx" or them requiring an hour of undivided attention. In my experience, it's rarely problem of "just forgetting to close them", but it's too hard to shelf them in the "correct way". You'd have to organize your favs in a specific way and then also send some websites to friends and also put some of them in your long-term notes solution (which is browser-agnostic).
I've thought about using wallabag before to solve this "problem", but I feel like it would just become this unsurmountable pile of links aka backlog of doom that I'll just pile onto and never dare to touch again or it turns into work and I tell myself I have to 'work on 2 of those backlog links each day'. But at least it would be not an open tab anymore? :D
i feel attacked
jk
Anyone else not use bookmarks? I do for work because there's too many things to remember, but for personal I don't use them at all. I used to try to use them, but then I realized I never went back to places I bookmarked. The sites I visit regularly are easy to find with a quick search and I know the URL.
I'm also an aggressive tab closer. I like to start my work day by closing as many tabs as possible. I usually get it down under 8. I view each tab as a thing to click on to get to a different place. Usually they are works in progress or sites I use a hourly while I work.
You might enjoy a tiling window manager.
Bookmarks are useful to me because I am always interested in obscure information and those are always going to be difficult to find on search engines. They are also great for finding your way to things on the old web. If you don’t constantly update your website Google thinks you are dead and your info is useless, and you’ll basically never find it again without going to page 10+ of your search results.
Beside that, going through them later is a real nostalgic treat because you will find so much stuff you thought was important at the time and have completely forgotten about now.
I have my own solution, which is tied to KDE Plasma, but suits me (and apparently a few other people) very well – I created a wrapper for Firefox to make it Activity-aware (script is much more complex and powerful nowadays, thanks to external contributions, see repo for the latest version)
In short: I am a heavy user of Activities in Plasma to separate different work environments or tasks. And in each (KDE Plasma) Activity my wrapper makes sure Firefox runs a separate (Firefox) Profile. That makes sure I always have only the tabs I need for that task/work environment.
(for a longer version, read the blog post)
P.S. I am using Tree-Style Tabs, but will take a look at Sidebery if it fits me better. I also tried OneTab before, but ultimately stopped because it was proprietary and it the workflow just did not suit me really well. I also use Pocket where I send pages I want to read later to (Wallabag is just as good, both have their +/-).
Oooh thank you for this. I also love KDE activities.
There’s currently a massive merge request that I’m currently looking to approve.
It’s taking me a long time, since whoever wrote it is much more skilled than I am. But if you’re good at shell scripting, please do go ahead and chime in! It would be much appreciated :)
See previously: https://tild.es/dmf
Welp. I thought I was fine with 27 tabs open after hearing all the nightmare stories of folks with >50 at any given time. Then I checked my RAM usage, decided for most definitely no reason at all I swear to follow the advice anyways, and now I have 6 tabs open and 4gb more available memory. How dare you make me change my habits!
I used an extension called Tab Wrangler on Chrome which archived unused tabs over a certain amount after a given time, which were stored on a handy list. You can whitelist tabs/domains that will never be archived. It is also available on Firefox.
If you're logged to Firefox Sync, it will sync your stored your tabs too.
I usually have 5 tabs open at the most.
I’m the type to keep maybe 8 tabs open per window max. Every email gets put into an archive folder unless it’s in an active conversation that I need to keep tabs on. Same general principal to physical mess, too. When not in use everything gets put away.