Don't try tab management addons, kids

[TuggyNE]

It only ends in tears.

Specifically, I thought, "hey, wouldn't it be cool if my 190+ tabs were somehow organized better than merely by loose groupings among the shuffle?" And indeed it would be. But the addon (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabgroups-manager/) I tried for this purpose was not up to the task; after fiddling around with its arcane preferences for a while, and suffering through a number of misfeatured defaults and oddly labeled options and bizarre quirks that potentially cause data loss, I settled briefly into a sort of peace. Peace broken by losing most of my tab groups rather suddenly, tabs and all, simply by making the mistake of letting Firefox close with the current tab being in a group that did not have the pinned app tabs. (If the preceding sentence makes no sense, fear not. It's a corner case that triggers a very serious bug, that's all.)

I only recovered the missing 160+ tabs because I am paranoid and have for the longest time kept Session Manager (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/session-manager/) enabled whenever possible. So now I am sent back in time about a week; same browser history, and nearly all the same tabs, but not quite.

In short: if you are designing an addon of this sort, make absolutely sure it will not and does not and cannot cause data loss. And if you are trying to figure out which addon to use, make sure you pick ones that do not cause data loss, or, failing that, at least be sure to have automatic backups.

This has been a public service announcement from TuggyNE. Stay frosty.

[valadil]

Hm. I don't think I've ever thought of tabs as user data before. I see them as temporary state. Anything that I want to save ends up as a bookmark and those are a whole lot easier to back up.

When I do need more tabs than my window holds, I use the group your tabs button. It comes with firefox but you have to customize your toolbar to get it to appear.

[Eldan]

TreeStyleTab. It's wonderful and I never had any problems with it.

[Flickerdart]

190 tabs. My god.

[factotum]

190 tabs. My god.

I echo my colleagues' sentiment. I find tabs become useless once they're too small to read what's in them, so how the heck you can handle having 190 of the things open is beyond me!

[Grinner]

Hm. I don't think I've ever thought of tabs as user data before. I see them as temporary state. Anything that I want to save ends up as a bookmark and those are a whole lot easier to back up.

I have to voice agreement with this. I can't tell you that you're using them wrong, but using 190 tabs at once is absurdly inefficient, particularly with Firefox. Your page file must be enormous.

[Yuki Akuma]

Why do you need that many tabs? Browsers have favourites for a reason.

[Eldan]

I do that too. "Ooh, a list of 45 articles I might want to read later! Better open them all!"

That's why treestyle tab is so great. You can read the entire title of a tab and sort them into groups easily.

[danirijeka]

Opera has built-in (if a bit quirky) tab-grouping feature. :smalltongue:

But still, goodness gracious, 190 tabs? I can barely remember 190 things in total...

[TuggyNE]

Present tab count: 219. Just in case you were wondering. (Using Tab Counter, of course; I don't count tabs manually, even by matrix.)


Hm. I don't think I've ever thought of tabs as user data before. I see them as temporary state. Anything that I want to save ends up as a bookmark and those are a whole lot easier to back up.

Bookmarks don't save where you were on a page or what you have entered. Also, I durno, I dislike using bookmarks for "go back to this in a bit" stuff, they're more for repeated use.

Put another way, yes, tabs are temporary state. My definition of temporary is just a bit longer-lasting.


When I do need more tabs than my window holds, I use the group your tabs button. It comes with firefox but you have to customize your toolbar to get it to appear.

Sure, I've tried that too. Was really excited about it when it first came out but somehow, it just didn't quite do the thing. Might be the annoying need to continually resize and drag and drop and fiddle with ratios and what-not, instead of just having it, y'know, work.


TreeStyleTab. It's wonderful and I never had any problems with it.

I've tried that, a long time ago, and somehow it didn't quite gel. Not sure why.


190 tabs. My god.
I echo my colleagues' sentiment. I find tabs become useless once they're too small to read what's in them, so how the heck you can handle having 190 of the things open is beyond me!
I have to voice agreement with this. I can't tell you that you're using them wrong, but using 190 tabs at once is absurdly inefficient, particularly with Firefox. Your page file must be enormous.

Haha. I recently read a review that mentioned having 1400 tabs open, and I had a very similar reaction. It's all a matter of relativity.

For that matter, pretty sure the person who opens a separate window for every page would have a similar reaction to my sister's 15 tabs, just as she does to mine. :smallwink:

My page file is a bit tricky to manage, yes, but I get by.


I do that too. "Ooh, a list of 45 articles I might want to read later! Better open them all!"

That's why treestyle tab is so great. You can read the entire title of a tab and sort them into groups easily.

Pretty much that use case, yes. Maybe I'll give it another try. (Although I have no trouble reading tab titles; minimum width is 100px, and the selected tab is customized to 200px wide. Because CSS is for browsers, not just pages! :smalltongue:)


But still, goodness gracious, 190 tabs? I can barely remember 190 things in total...

Well, I certainly don't remember all those tabs at any one time, and I can't say it's exactly ideal (which is why I'm trying to organize them), but they tend to fall in maybe 6-10 loose groups.

[valadil]

Bookmarks don't save where you were on a page or what you have entered. Also, I durno, I dislike using bookmarks for "go back to this in a bit" stuff, they're more for repeated use.


I have folders for long term bookmarks. Anything that isn't in a folder is my reading list. Then I read it or folder it as I have time. That doesn't address your scrolling or form entering though.

You might want to look into xmarks. It's the browser extension I use for syncing bookmarks to between my work and home machines, which also conveniently pushes my bookmarks to xmarks' servers for offsite backup. I mention this because it has a feature I've never used which is tab sync. Open tabs on one of your machines will be sent to another. I have no idea if they'll be backed up or if it's smart enough to handle forms and scrolling, but if this is how you use your tabs it might be worth looking into.

[bluewind95]

190 tabs. My god.

It's happened to me.

OP, do you visit sites like TVTropes, or other such wikis? It's with those kinds of pages that I end up having a few more tabs than a sane person should have.

[Coidzor]

Clearly I am a relic of a bygone and fading strain of humanity.

I can barely comprehend wanting to have more than 20 tabs open.

[nedz]

I use Firefox's Tab Group feature.
I have one window with 20 tabs, another with about 40, and two more smaller dump windows with about 40 and 15 tabs respectively. These latter two windows are for special interest tabs which I rarely read, the other two are my main sets. GitP etc. seems to involve having 40+ tabs active at any time.

[Flickerdart]

It's happened to me.

OP, do you visit sites like TVTropes, or other such wikis? It's with those kinds of pages that I end up having a few more tabs than a sane person should have.
I think I've hit around 30 doing that, but I read them and then close them, not keep them around like pets.

[TuggyNE]

I have folders for long term bookmarks. Anything that isn't in a folder is my reading list. Then I read it or folder it as I have time. That doesn't address your scrolling or form entering though.

In the past I've used Read It Later/Pocket, but it has some unfortunate interactions so it's disabled at present. If memory serves, it saves scrolling, but not forms.

It also has a whole lot of orphaned entries that I really need to work through one of these times. :smalleek: Had forgotten about those, in fact. :smallfrown:


You might want to look into xmarks. It's the browser extension I use for syncing bookmarks to between my work and home machines, which also conveniently pushes my bookmarks to xmarks' servers for offsite backup. I mention this because it has a feature I've never used which is tab sync. Open tabs on one of your machines will be sent to another. I have no idea if they'll be backed up or if it's smart enough to handle forms and scrolling, but if this is how you use your tabs it might be worth looking into.

I don't need to synchronize, no. Just the one laptop, and while I do have multiple user profiles (and multiple FF/TB profiles, too), they don't and aren't intended to share data like that.

I suppose it's possible I could work out some odd interaction with one profile that accumulates tabs to read, and another profile to read them down, or some such thing, but otherwise that doesn't seem like it'd do the trick.


Clearly I am a relic of a bygone and fading strain of humanity.

I can barely comprehend wanting to have more than 20 tabs open.

Heheh. Relic, maybe, but bygone and fading not so much; I think that's still the majority of users.


It's happened to me.

OP, do you visit sites like TVTropes, or other such wikis? It's with those kinds of pages that I end up having a few more tabs than a sane person should have.

I do, but that's not where these come from. At present, I have at least a dozen medium-term tabs from GitP, mostly homebrew I want to comment on eventually or finish drafting or threads I want to remix, a couple dozen webcomics I'm evaluating whether or not to add them to my fixed repertoire, two dozen or so articles about functional programming and SQL and other things, and so on.


I think I've hit around 30 doing that, but I read them and then close them, not keep them around like pets.

Aye. Transient tab count can go as high as 260 or so at times, but the lasting count is around 180, although a month or two ago I got it down to 140 for a bit.

[valadil]

I don't need to synchronize, no. Just the one laptop, and while I do have multiple user profiles (and multiple FF/TB profiles, too), they don't and aren't intended to share data like that.


Oh, I didn't mean that for synchronization's sake. I meant as a backup. Set up xmarks on the one laptop and if you lose your tabs or bookmarks again, restore from one of their snapshots.

[zabbarot]

I don't usually get over 60 tabs up at a time so my method might not work as well for you, but I sort them in different windows. I program web based applications so I usually have one window for each project with tabs full of relevant information, and an extra window for nonwork things, like this site here. That way my tabs never get so small that I can't see them and I can just alt tab to cycle through projects.

[bluewind95]

I think I've hit around 30 doing that, but I read them and then close them, not keep them around like pets.

Me neither, but sometimes I multitask and I don't get done reading for a while and each tab I read leads to other tabs and... yeah.

[TuggyNE]

I don't usually get over 60 tabs up at a time so my method might not work as well for you, but I sort them in different windows. I program web based applications so I usually have one window for each project with tabs full of relevant information, and an extra window for nonwork things, like this site here. That way my tabs never get so small that I can't see them and I can just alt tab to cycle through projects.

I do something similar with N++, actually, but so far Firefox usage hasn't been kind to the same scheme. Mostly I think because it's annoying and risky to have to close and re-open all those windows properly with session store once or twice a day.

It's kind of astonishing, really, how many possible solutions there are that don't quite work. :smallsigh: