Hacker News Reader

> By the time I've browsed on a couple topics, I have enough tabs open I can't see the titles any more

Sidebery or TreeStyleTabs lets you see the titles no matter how many you have. ... Well, you have to scroll, but it's so much better than having to go through tab-by-tab with a typical horizontal tab bar.

> Every now and then, I declare tab bankruptcy, mass bookmark them (to get over the feeling that I'll be closing something important), and close them all.

> I've never, ever, once, in 15ish years of operating this way, looked at any of the bookmarks.

Even though I can see the tab titles, this is exactly what I do(n't). I threw together a couple scripts to extract all the tabs (including which window they're in), and export that all to an org-mode file.

Any one else favorite hackernews articles knowing they will never actually take the time to go back and read them and their comments? I feel like this is not too dissimilar to hoarding your tabs there. Tsundoku for the digital world.

I'm essentially the same way, with the caveat that I do occasionally go back and find something from one of those archived bookmarks. Maybe a couple times a year at most, which is all the validation my lizard brain needs to consider this a critical practice that I will continue doing without questioning for the rest of my life.

I used to be the same and it drove me nuts. Eventually I looked for a solution and ended up installing Limit Tabs[0] to limit the number of my tabs[1] to 10-15. I couldn't be happier!

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/rudolf-fernan...

[1]: On my desktop. Unfortunately, the extension is not available for Firefox for Android, so on mobile I tell Firefox to discard tabs that I haven't used for a day.

I liked the term tab bankruptcy. I'm using tab stash[1] to stash them aside with a timestamp (or a descriptive name if you want to). So, it does not clutter my bookmarks.

Then, I can search or clear the list, or bring back from the stash whenever I want.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-stash/

Cue David Attenborough voice:

And here we find the Tab Hoarder ...

Tree-style tabs lets you close an entire (sub)tree of tabs at once, should you choose to do so.

It's also useful to start new projects in a new window, and let the tree structure build up in that as you progress. You can close parts or all of that window as you've concluded with them.

I operate this way, but I didn't used to bookmark them. Until one day I needed to find a website that I had not bookmarked and had closed. I even remembered where the tab was supposed to be but I had mass closed my tabs. It took a long time until I found the page again.

Good lord! If you mass bookmark, aren't you just turning your bookmarks into your history? In that case why not just use browser history instead?

I don't do this, but it appeals to me, as History seems to be pretty spotty, I've a couple of times recently tried to find something in my history, and it ended up as if it was never there.

Ya history isn't forever, at least in default Firefox.

I was quite annoyed when I realized that since I was hoping to find something from many years ago.

Not the person you're replying to, but I clear history on close. I don't clear bookmarks on close.

- History gets cleared sometimes. Bookmarks are (basically) forever.

- History includes tons of ephemeral shit, like search result pages (useless, will be different the next time you load it) and redirect pages, or things I've actively decided not to care about. If I looked at 20 shirts on a store-site but only had 3 still open, odds are good I already firmly rejected the other 17. Straight history loses the information of which ones I cared about the most.

History is comprehensive, bookmarking is curated.

It's possible to edit history, but it's easier and more useful to edit bookmarks: removing (as with history), but also tagging, annotating, and/or organising.

Heap'o'clothes on the floor vs. a well-organised bureau or closet.