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Comment by andrewla | Hacker News Reader

I've increasingly found that my use of tabs is closely related to the fact that back/forward navigation is unworkable in many cases.

The most typical case is that I am looking at a list of things, and I want to click on a result but if I hit back, I don't want to wait an eternity for the page to reload -- if it even does; more often than not something breaks in the back navigation and the results I was looking at are not longer available or the context has switched.

Basically I want cost-free backwards and forwards navigation, and tabs are how you do that. But essentially I want that hidden from me. I would much prefer if under the covers hitting back didn't navigate you away from a page, it just keeps the page you are on in a virtual tab in case you want to go back to it. Similarly, clicking a link shouldn't navigate away from the page you're on, but just put it in a virtual tab.

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Just adding on…

Browsers model back/forward linearly whereas the mental model I want is more tree-like. If I end up going back a few times and then click a link in the same tab, I lose all ability to go forward again. So a lot of my tabs are the result of using “duplicate tab” so I can take actions that destroy the back/forwards state without losing the original.

If we’re going to have a browser implement instant, reliable back/forward, I’d also like to see some simple way of choosing from all forward actions I’ve previously taken. Because my browsing is so often non-linear.

Strongly agree -- this is where tabs as artifacts becomes useful. I don't necessarily feel that we need to eliminate tabs in favor of "virtual" tabs but that we can contain the "tab explosion" problem. One thing I do frequently is do a middle-click-on-back-button to navigate backwards but keep the current tab open; the enhancement here would be that this would be a cost-free and non-context-losing operation.

This is 100% true.

I'm a tab hoarder, and your comment made me realize that it's mostly because I don't want to lose the source of a interesting links.

So I just open in new tab or duplicate tab to preserve the original tab and it's history.

I thought it was only me, but so much yes. Back/forward is so broken and unusable websites make it even worse. Going back brings you straight to the top which kind of sucks if there is endless scrolling. Websites making it hard or impossible to open links in new tabs are really annoying as well.

I would be happy to have tabs on the top, then tabs on a side for all tabs opened from the current tab. I find that wish there were a way to group tabs opened together, for example when I am exploring several datasheets at once to select a suitable part. Sometimes a new window works well enough but for complicated browsing that isn't really useful enough. At some point the branches get complicated but even 3 layers deep would be enough for me before breaking into new windows.

Firefox and other browsers use an optimization called the bfcache (back-forward cache) that is intended to do exactly that. However, lots of web developers write their pages in a way that defeats the bfcache optimization. Moreover, bloated large page sizes (including JS objects) will make the bfcache more likely to evict entries.

Compare using back/forward on a boring HTML site like Hacker News, and to something like say, the Google Search results page. What's funny is that Google itself has a page on how to optimize your website for bfcache implementations, with some Chromium-specific tweaks, but the left hand doesn't talk to the right at Google, so we're stuck with lots of full page refreshes on Google properties.

https://web.dev/bfcache/

>lots of web developers write their pages in a way that defeats the bfcache optimization

Yes, webapps, with their own internalized breadcrumb system.

I open all links in a new tab. Back and forward are annoying even if they did work.

I've never thought of this but you're spot on.

I'd say that's about 50% of my usage and the other 50% is hoarding every HN story to later bookmark and never revisit :P

Wouldn't it be easier to just upvote or favorite stories and then check your list of upvoted / favorites?

That's a solution that works on HN. Browser tabs in the background work on the whole web.

The reloading of the google/bing/whatever search results page on backwards navigation is infuriating. I've been looking for options to turn it off in firefox but no luck.

A browser/extension that saves a snapshot when you click a link. When you click back, the snapshot is magically[1] restored.

Hold my beer, I'm gonna try to "snapshot" with iframes or something.

[1] I don't know if it's even possible, since this goes beyond HTML, DOM, and memory; nowadays there might be a lot IO "open", e.g. webcams, sound, websockets, etc.

Came here to say something aligned with that:

I typically keep one window for each “navigation group”.

Answering a single question, understanding a specific topic, finding the product I’m going to purchase (then purchasing it). That way I once I’m done I can close the whole window without looking at the contents of the other tabs (and risking (more) rabbit holes)

Been thinking about this too

What would be the drawback to just show the page as it was without reloading? Too much memory consumed when retaining too much state from previous pages?

What if the page told you only what to change in the current page as you navigated to links in the same domain? Like browsing through git commits.

A pain to implement but kind of an interesting experiment

That is exactly how I have always used tabs. It lets you preload all your pages you want, and quickly inspect and dismiss them. On a google search, I might middle click 7 of the 10 links, and then immediately close 4 of them when they arent what I wanted.

On hckrnews.com I can first put my brain in "which of these is interesting to me mode", and then once they are all open, switch to reading.

I would prefer that a page like facebook, twitter, reddit only ever go back to the top when the refresh button is pressed. But since none of them behave as a web page should, it forces you to open everything in a new tab to preserve the page state. Middle click, close tab is the replacement for link click, back. And as others have said, browser back and forth is destructive. As you navigate you lose information. The link is still in history, but you have lost the relationship between what order things were navigated to and from, and which page led you to them.

There is a market for somebody to come around and completely redesign the browser chrome paradigm, replacing back/forth, history, tabs, and bookmarks with something more seamless that preserves state, intent, relationship, and time.

There should be multiple ways to open something. Super temporary, temporary, less temporary. There should be multiple ways to close something, remove from history, keep in history, minimize.

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