I use a LOT of tabs, and the best plugin has been The Great Suspender. Highly recommend it for anyone who wants memory & CPU back and keeps many tabs/windows open at once: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspende...
I hate having more than 6-7 simultaneously open because it gets increasingly harder to keep an overview of what you're doing. The same applies for IDE tabs or windows. Too much of them and finding the right one becomes increasingly hard, and losing the thread more likely.
My open tabs are kinda like my working memory. I could close them and reopen them as needed, but it is easier to just click a tab then to try to find the thing again. In addition, sometimes the pages I am looking at have dynamic navigation, and closing and reopening the page will require a good deal of navigation to find the section I was looking at. Plus, the overall time to reload the content, where if I just have the tab open there is no download time.
Also, the tab icons help me remember what I was looking at. I will often keep tabs open for what I wanted to read later.
As for read-later, I usually pull them into the bookmarks bar (top level, directly visible) to free up some space.
I'd recommend using one of the extensions instead.
The only bad thing is realizing you have a couple hundred old tabs to go through and delete. They really add up over time.
If I want to add a new tab instead of finding the old I can press shift (IIRC).
In addition, you have to take the time for the page to load, you have to delete the bookmark later if you dont want to clutter up your bookmarks, etc.
I use many tabs as a stack of pages when debugging, researching, or reading aggregate news feeds (reddit, hn). It usually starts with a Google search or two, in which I open all links I think _might_ be relevant based off of what information google can provide me from the results page.
From there I read through each and open any further tabs if anything is linked too in the text (I hardly ever actually click navigate, it's most always a new tab). Generally this only goes about 3 deep (search, first page, sub links). I will close any pages that I find have no useful information, but if there is anything I think might be useful in the next 30 minutes I just leave it open. I do this for each of the results I originally opened. Somewhere in the 7-15 tabs generally is the answer I'm looking for or at least there is enough information I can answer my question. If any link is particularly beneficial, I will bookmark it. Generally the time span I have a large number of tabs open is no more than an hour before I'm finished and close everything out.
Chrome handles this nicely, if you are on a page and open a tab, it will place the new tab next to the current tab, instead of at the end of the tab list. Some sort of tree tab view would probably work much better for this, but Chromes behavior isn't bad for what I do.
What I'd really like, though, is a 'close all descendant tabs' option.
So I leave them open until the computer can't handle it.
I always close them, most aren't needed for a long time.
But if I need stuff I closed I just hit 'reopen closed tab' a few times.
I typically have 100 or so tabs in Firefox. I did get over 600 once, but that's too many ;-)
I use my tabs like a generational garbage collector. Tabs to the left of the current tab are processed, tabs on the right are to-be-processed. I'll go to a page like reddit or HN and spin off a dozen tabs of things to read. Then I'll go through one by one and either process, delay or close.
Once I reach about 250 - 300 tabs, I'll do a longer generation sweep and go through all the tabs and try to get it down to less than 100 or so.
Basically, I'm never in need of finding any specific tab. If I want the content from that tab, I'll just open a new one and navigate back to that point. The tabs are really a lightweight to-read list.
On the other hand I rather use native apps, when given the option.
Which I also only keep the ones for the task at hand open.
I don't use favorites or bookmarks because usually I don't need a link permanently.
Edit: I actively try not to get too many. If it starts to hide the title/favicon completely I start to close them again until I can recognize them by title without clicking through them.
I'm more of a less is more guy, when it comes to windows/tabs.
Incidentally, the note papers floating around on my desk works in a similar way, although they are more of an unordered set. Only one or two are relevant, the rest were helpful at some point but no longer are. Cleaning my table usually results in me dumping the whole thing in the dustbin.
Why do you need an overview? It's like stack frames: you can limit your scope to what you're currently doing. The other tabs represent stuff that's "parked" and you aspire to come back to.
(This is why tabs are better than windows for this, because they maintain a linear order while most systems will re-order window order if you visit the windows)
My tab-opening habits predate tabs, because I was raised on Netscape Navigator with a modem using "open in new window" instead. I would read down a page and open interesting-looking hyperlinks in the background, so I didn't have to wait for them to load. Another advantage of this technique on modems was that I could close down the line and carry on reading.
Leave open the tabs you know you'll need soon(ish) and let the Great Suspender throttle them, and save (then close) groups of tabs/windows you won't need right away using Session Buddy.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/session-buddy/edac...
"""
Advantages over The Great Suspender:
- More memory savings
- Compatible with chrome tab syncing
- Super lightweight extension that uses no content scripts or persistent background scripts
Disadvantages over The Great Suspender:
- No visibility on which tabs have been suspended
- Unable to prevent a tab from reloading when it gains focus
"""
tl;dr - Great suspender is even "more aggressive" than the outlined throttling, as it fully suspends the page and returns all CPU and RAM to you, so it's a great solution for people interested in throttling background tabs.