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Comment by axbytg | Hacker News Reader

> As someone who has thousands of tabs open

This behavior always confuses me. To what end? Have you ever derived any value from a tab you chose not to close?

Hm, I'm kind of confused by your perspective here. Do you only have a single thread of tasks you're doing at any given time on your machine, all of whose resources are torn down and rebuilt from scratch when needed? I use my current laptop both for work and personally, and in my personal workspaces alone, I have at least half a dozen browser windows with ~20 tabs representing research that I'm doing or a task that I'm organizing; everything from gift-buying to medical devices for a family issue to building a new workout routine for the pandemic. You can rack up tons of relevant tabs pretty quickly in these scenarios, and there's really no advantage to closing them in any well-managed environment (ie one that has non-rudimentary window management and a browser/extension that handles idle tabs with negligible ongoing resource use).

I probably have hundreds of "productive" tabs open, and that's before even getting to tabs that are serving as an "L1 cache" version of a read-it-later service. And all of this comes with extremely quick clean-up; once I buy the gift/finalize the routine/purchase the item, it's trivial to close the entire window for that task.

Having hundreds or thousands open tabs also confuses me and always seems like a mess to me.

The way i work: I mostly work on a one thing at a time. For that i can have probably at max 40 tabs open. Once it gets past some threshold(i don't recognize or remember what's in them) i tend to start to close the obsolete ones. If there is something i find useful i bookmark it. If there is something i think i would like to read in future i also bookmark it. Once the work is done i close all the tabs. In general i like my tabs closed, it brings peace to my mind.

I don't think I go into thousands, but easily accumulate a few 100 tabs. The way I work, I rarely have a task truly done in one go. Besides various side projects, I work on multiple websites for multiple clients and constantly need to put one on hold and wait for feedback, so I go work on another one. If I expect feedback withing a ~2 day period, it really doesn't make sense for me to close the related tabs. Not only does it save time when picking up the task again, but helps me reconstruct my train of thought without having to take notes.

The way I think of it is kind of like swap memory. Instead of wasting effort saving to disk and verifying the saved data (taking notes), I chuck the data somewhere it isn't in the way (a new virtual desktop) so I can pick it up later. In fact, this is exactly what happens with the tabs at the system level. Since I'm constantly running out of ram and have a stupid amount of swap space set up, my OS gladly swaps the relevant browser processes and unswap the relevant set.

> it brings peace to my mind.

Mine too.

My thoughts on this kind of thing aren't in any way backed by studies or research (I know some folks are sticklers for that sort of thing), but they essentially boil down to reflecting on human history.

The ability to store a huge amount of information and near-instantly recall it with these computery things we all love is an incredibly new development that I don't really consider compatible with my brain. If the brain is a somewhat general purpose computer that's been really slowly optimised by evolution, the alternative approach to ours is akin to* scheduling hundreds of threads on a small number of hardware threads. Doable? Sure. Ideal? Doesn't feel like it to me.

I've tried allowing myself to just continuously spawn tabs and it makes me uncomfortable much like it does to see a Windows desktop used as a dumping ground for whatever a person happens to want to save on their machine. Fortunately I almost never see the latter these days, and I'll choose to believe people don't do that anymore without verifying that assumption...

*this is really hand-wavy, please don't shoot.

I have seen this behaviour repeatedly. Having to many “task windows” makes it difficult to focus. Similar to having to many tasks in Asana or emails in my Inbox. Prioritisation is the only option to come out of this. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to tag priority with the “task windows”. And that’s the reason I daily browse through all windows and close the ones that are not urgent.

Hm, I haven't found this to be the case. This is probably in part because of my WM/OS setup; I use a tiling window manager and different workspaces for different contexts, so my fan-out factor is never that high in cases where it matters.

May I recommend Zotero [0] to you?

"Your personal research assistant

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share research."

Like you I am an avaricious multi-tasker over extended periods of time and was heading towards the same state you appear to have reached.

I realised it was not optimal and did some research and discovered Zotero. I use it personally and require it at my businesses.

It adds several wonderful abilities - best is the ability to share and collaborate on research at will.

[0] https://www.zotero.org/

> Like you I am an avaricious multi-tasker over extended periods of time and was heading towards the same state you appear to have reached.

> I realised it was not optimal

I will take a look, thank you! Would you mind briefly elaborating on what you found suboptimal about the workspace/window/tab hierarchy for organizing your tasks? So far it's working very well for me, and the low friction is a really important part of it. Though it's completely possible that I have blind spots around my pain points, or am about to run into a wall. Thanks in advance for your thoughts?

My issues with tabs, even with extensions that organise them:

  * sheer mental challenge of quickly relocating related tabs and the context for why they were kept and relationships between them

  * inability to easily add WIP notes and commentary

  * difficulty of sharing tabs and context with others

  * possibility of losing them if power lost unexpectedly (during extended suspend for example) or accidentally close a single window instead of doing File > Quit

  * moving between different devices and different browsers

  * efficiency; affect on the browser and system of keeping tabs open for long periods of time (without quitting browser)

I don't use workspaces for the same reason I don't like tabbing between applications on the same monitor. I use multiple monitors so I only need to move my eyes to switch focus.

This all makes sense, thank you. The friction-free aspect of browser windows is still pretty critical to my workflow, but I'll look into whether it makes sense to grow the habit of "migrating" a task to Zotero when it gets heavy-duty enough.

I first discovered Zotero via the Mozilla add-ons search whilst looking for an extension to help me. Using the Firefox/Chromium connector puts it a context-click away:

Zotero Connector > Save To Zotero > "Web Page with Snapshot" / "Web Page without Snapshot"

So I can both maintain the tab workflow whilst 'tracking' progress with Zotero application itself.

This describes Amna quite well. I think you'd love it! It's still early, but a lot fo the things you mention, we're working on.

https://getamna.com

It's designed like a todo list which is a layer out to keep that context

The promo looks slick but there are two blockers for me:

  1.  Not FOSS (Hard requirement *)
  2.  Basic/Free version doesn't claim Firefox connector

* I insist all my businesses use only FOSS for core functionality and we have on-premise capability (no 'cloud'). As well as putting us in control of our own destiny (we have the talent) we can add specific functionality at-will and do contribute that back to projects as well as buying support contracts or making regular donations.

Thanks for calling it out! Open Source is a consideration, but we're not there just yet with it. You still have 'On' Premise with Amna. All data is stored on your machine.

I cannot speak for the user you replied to, but to answer this question:

> Do you only have a single thread of tasks you're doing at any given time on your machine, all of whose resources are torn down and rebuilt from scratch when needed?

Yes, absolutely, at least when it comes to my web browser.

I run Firefox Nightly and intentionally use its prompt to restart for an update as a prompt to consider whether I should close the things I have open. I'll sometimes ignore the update for a few hours, but not usually longer than that.

If I need to retain some information over a period of more than a few hours, I'll transfer it to a note-taking app or something similar. Habitually not keeping a large number of tabs open helps me maintain focus to some extent, and deliberating over whether to close a tab or window presents and opportunity to think about extracting a snippet for storage elsewhere.

To me the idea of keeping an entire webpage open as a method of storing what is likely a very small subset of what it contains just doesn't seem "right", regardless of actual resource consumption on the computer I'm using.

I do the same. In a notes app, I have a TODO note where I save links and a few word description of what a link is. This gives me one place to maintain a reading list.

I also have notes for current projects/tasks. I have structure and search to find things.

As a life-hack to make better use of my time, I use the Freedom.io service to block all social media and “time wasting” sites so that I can only access them before work, first half hour of lunch time, and after end of work day. In practice what this means is that I scan HN and Twitter early each morning for tech stuff that is useful/interesting and add any useful links to my notes. Every few days I edit my notes to discard material.

On the topic of blocking distractions, I've found that creating a separate user account for focus time helps quite a bit, since it's sufficiently annoying to remove that particular barrier. Choosing not to configure a keyboard shortcut for account switching was a good call, too.

I tried using multiple Little Snitch profiles or different browsers on the same user account in the past but switching between them is way too low effort for my easily distracted brain. Getting back into distraction mode can be performed on autopilot in those cases.

That little delay in waiting for my watch to unlock my user account is just long enough to make me stop and think, and the vibration is like a gentle slap on the wrist.

My focus account has a single Little Snitch profile configured to block the time-vampires I know I'm susceptible to, along with Firefox configured to clear history on close. I don't need to be reminded Twitter exists just because I opened my browser and pressed T, they should at least have to pay for the privilege of advertising to my brain!

In general I think that taking full advantage of computers to make absolutely everything instantly accessible is in many ways actively harmful to many types of brains. We live in an economy and too many of us just give that stuff away.

> well-managed environment (ie one that has non-rudimentary window management and a browser/extension that handles idle tabs with negligible ongoing resource use).

Can you elaborate on this? Which extensions are you talking about?

I also rack up hundreds of tabs and my browser is often the main resource hog for me. I’ll often have to kill -9 it to force it to start with “oops we crashed, here are your previous tabs in an unloaded state”, but it sounds like you have a better way of doing this

The Firefox extension "Auto Tab Discard" is what you're looking for. Not sure about equivalents for other browsers.

I currently use the Great Suspender on Chrome, which will suspend a tab that's been open for a while. The suspended tab just shows a Great Suspender icon, so it takes up ~0 RAM. I've whitelisted certain domains and sites (eg Messenger apps).

I know there are a ton of extensions aimed at this problem, including OneTab (which will collapse many tabs into a single page of links), but TGS works the best for my workflow.

I also use Session Buddy to periodically backup my current window/tab state, which I find more reliable and powerful than the default tab-restore functionality.

DANGER, Will Robinson!

I could really use something like the Great Suspender. However, looking into it, I found quite a bit of controversy surrounding its new (since June) "maintainer". This issue sums it up well: "SECURITY: New maintainer is probably malicious"[1]

Here is the gist of it:

> Using the chrome web store version of this extension, without disabling tracking, will execute code from an untrusted third-party on your computer, with the power to modify any and all websites that you see.

So, installing from the Chrome Web Store is a complete no-go.

One can still install the extension from GitHub, but with Chrome constantly evolving and the now, unmaintained-on-GitHub extension having known issues with losing all your tabs (to which there are workarounds), I'm very wary of using this extension.

[1]: https://github.com/greatsuspender/thegreatsuspender/issues/1...

Thank you for the heads-up! The way extension stores work always made me a little uneasy about using smaller ones like this.

Edit: haha, someone seems to have seen your comment and made a post that made it to the Frontpage of HN

You're welcome! Yes, it's quite problematic and there are numerous ways malicious code can abuse the sandboxed environment.

That's great news about that article! Thanks for pointing that out.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25622015

I derive close to zero value from bookmarks. The only value they provide is that they appear in the address bar during searches. They are organized in a linear fashion, they require constant maintenance and they are also not immediately accessible often requiring you to open a separate window. Worst of all even if you choose to do something as stupid as manage bookmarks you will now have to have to manage both tabs and bookmarks at the same time.

Tabs? They are easy to organize, easily accessible because they are always visible and they are powerful enough to completely remove the need for bookmarks which makes using bookmarks always inferior because of the downsides of bookmarks.

Now lets get to the actual point:

>Have you ever derived any value from a tab you chose not to close?

I close tabs that I don't need eventually, bookmarks just keep accumulating because there is an easy method to add them, but actually finding or deleting bookmarks is a lot of effort.

It helps if you use tags more than folders for bookmarks, that way you can have a page marked as "dogs, computers", another as "dogs, pizza" and then filter to dogs to see both. It also helps (in firefox) if you know the special symbols you can put in the address bar for filtering. * for normal bookmarks, I think + for tags, and % works for open tabs. Follow them with a space and your keyword.

I've been using qutebrowser mainly for a couple months now, and I find the way bookmarks and quickmarks fit into the standard open or open in new tab dialogue feels very powerful. I often am just hitting O to open in new tab, typing a few characters, and picking a result from bookmarks or history. Searching and going to a URL happens there too. I try to use either descriptive names like "guix-bug-issue" for quickmarks so they show up when I type any of those bits (bug and issue intentionally redundant so if I think to search either, it comes up), or I use very shorts strings like "lfm" for my last.fm profile. In the case of these shorter ones, you get the added advantage of being able to go there without looking. If you type an exact quickmark name in the box and hit enter, it goes straight there, you don't have to wait and look over the suggestions in the box.

Chrome only preserves browsing history for 90 days. Keeping tabs open can work around that limitation

Without even bothering to check, this seems like it can't possibly be true. You are surely not saying that the billions of Chrome users worldwide have no browsing history from September or earlier, right?

"Your History page shows the webpages you've visited on Chrome in the last 90 days."[0]

Google's My Activity[1] stores everything though.

[0] https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95589

[1] https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity

Damn, that's ridiculously evil... why the hell am I only able to get basic functionality through a cloud service?!

That's absolutely right, at least in terms of the Chrome browser history. I always found this limitation astounding.

I use the History Trends Unlimited extension to work around this (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/history-trends-unl...)

With 5 years of history the stats page is a bit slow to load but the search feature works great and it can export to CSV

Yes–I go back and read them occasionally. By keeping things open I get frequent reminders to look at things and sometimes I do.

I used to do this now I just search again and occasionally I will bookmark a page that is too valuable to miss in future searches.

This keeps my bookmarks clean.

> Have you ever derived any value from a tab you chose not to close?

Not GP but of course!

Why would we close something we are going back to?

I open a new window to research a specific topic. Then I open up all the links on sub tabs.

This encloses all my research for this subject in one window. Often times I have upwards of 10+ windows opened. Since some of the work spans over several days or weeks.

I also take screenshots of relevant information. Which gets automatically labeled by date and time into a screenshot folder, and sub-sorted into months.

This is where I miss to be able to name each group-of-tabs (the window) with a name so I can manage (eg when alt-tab’ing) quickly.

So window ‘topic-1’ have 10 tabs relating to ‘topic-1’ and the property ‘topic-1’ is visible in my WM.

Is this possible (I have not -yet - searched ‘enough’ for this functionality...)?

I use Window Titler[0] for this because I use the same workflow of opening a new window for each "topic".

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/window-titler...

Try Amna. https://getamna.com.

You can do this per chrome window and bubble the tasks up to a task.

I am very happy to have shared my thoughts here (and received good feedback and suggestions!), but the best is that it finally made me look into this need - and I am not the first (big surprise :-)

It turns out that just very recently exactly what I need was made possible in Chrome (currently only "experimental") just set this flag [1]. I especially like that it's possible without the need of third party SW.

This page [2] is what alerted my attention to the solution.

NB.: It does make me wonder why this feature have not existed until now as it seems so obvious, I mean ever since the introduction of the TABbed interface in browsers (which started pre 2000 IIRC) the (over-) usage pattern of tabs existed.

Anyway - even if I have missed something pre-existing I am now extremely happy to be able to name my TABS in Chrome!

[1] chrome://flags/#window-naming

[2] https://winaero.com/how-to-name-a-window-in-google-chrome/

This is exactly how I "partition" my work; makes closing logically related tabs super simple too - just close the window related to the "topic".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com