[chongli]

It's interesting how tabs have supplanted bookmarks for a lot of people. Neither one is a particularly good UI, mind you, but tabs are a little bit better than bookmarks.

I wish something even better would come along but I don't really know what that would look like.

[21echoes]

Firefox with Tab Groups and AwesomeBar fits very nicely with my workflow--

1. I dont have to think. I Cmd+Click links as I find them interesting, switch tabs as my attention changes, etc. and the tabs just stay there, waiting.

2. AwesomeBar searches over open tabs by default, and selecting a suggestion switches to that open tab rather than opening a new one.

3. When I have time, I can sort my tabs into labelled groups ("Work", "Research", "Shopping", "Politics", etc.)

4. Tabs are sync'd to and from my Firefox for Android automatically, so if I'm on the move and I want to pull up that thing on the tip of my tongue, it's right there on my phone as well.

I'm sure it's not perfect for everyone, but it works for me /shrug

[olejorgenb]

For the lazy: Awesomebar is just firefox's the built-in address bar. It can be configured to search simultaneous through history, tab (titles of open tabs), etc.

Or one can specify what to search with this micro language:

    Add ^ to search for matches in your browsing history.
    Add * to search for matches in your bookmarks.
    Add + to search for matches in pages you've tagged.
    Add % to search for matches in your currently open tabs.
    Add ~ to search for matches in pages you've typed.
    Add # to search for matches in page titles.
    Add @ to search for matches in web addresses (URLs).
    Add $ to search for matches in suggestions.

[olejorgenb]

The operator doesn't have to be the first char. This works too: "some tab I have %"

Another nugget I just found out about: alt-enter opens the what you typed in in a new tab.

[newscracker]

> Another nugget I just found out about: alt-enter opens the what you typed in in a new tab.

If you're visiting a site by entering the address (as opposed to using search or a bang command on DuckDuckGo or using a bookmark/history entry), then you'd also appreciate the following shortcuts:

Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on Mac) for "www." prefix and ".com" suffix on the domain. Eg: type "google" <Ctrl+Enter> (or Cmd+Enter) to go to www.google.com

Shift+Enter for "www." prefix and ".net" suffix on the domain. Eg: type "jsfiddle" <Shift+Enter> to go to www.jsfiddle.net

Ctrl+Shift+Enter (Cmd+Shift+Enter on Mac) for "www." prefix and ".org" suffix on the domain. Eg: type "wikipedia" <Ctrl+Shift+Enter> (or Cmd+Shift+Enter) to go to www.wikipedia.org

In my knowledge, the www.<domain>.com autofill with Ctrl+Enter was pioneered by Internet Explorer, but Firefox is the only browser that took it to the next level as a built-in feature.

[nachtigall]

Wow, using Firefox for 15 years and did not know. Here's a link to the docs I found now: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/awesome-bar-search-fire...

[mih]

Been using FF for a long time and still was unaware of this. Thanks for the tip

[weaksauce]

You might (might not) find my extension useful. I made it for people that horde tabs like you and me. It's a page that lists tabs per window visually and if you click on one of the links it focuses the tab for you.

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabist/

and chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabist/hdjegjggiog...

It's also open source: https://github.com/fiveNinePlusR/tabist

If you end up trying it, let me know if you find it useful/hate it or have something that should be added :)

[jholman]

I just installed it (Tabist reports 415 tabs in 9 windows). Looks tentatively useful, I'll keep it around.

If it's easy to add a by-date-last-opened to the order-by at the top, that MIGHT be useful? If it's easy to add the text of the window title to the table, that MIGHT be useful? Those are just top-of-my-head spitball ideas.

[weaksauce]

415 tabs! Wow, that's even more than I typically have... 200ish over many windows.

One thing that is not 100% clear is that you can press cmd-shift-e to bring up the tabist page. or ctrl-shift-e if you are on windows/linux.

> by-date-last-opened to the order-by at the top

That's planned but not easily attained information from the browser so it'd have to be tracked by the extension from the startup of it.

> If it's easy to add the text of the window title to the table

That's how the extension works but there was a bug[1] that I fixed in firefox that needs to be propagated through the builds in order for it to show up in release. I believe it will land in firefox 51 which comes out early next year... yeah 2017-01-24 is when it will be released[2]. If you want it now you can get on the beta build and it will be fixed.

1. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1289213

2. https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar

cheers,

hope this helps.

[newscracker]

Thanks, I will definitely try this one since I use tons of tabs as an interface for "read it later" stuff and avoid forgetting about them altogether.

It'd be nice to include the favicon (if available) next to each link so that a visual scan is easy to perform. Otherwise a "Find on page" (Ctrl+F) would have to be used to find something in a list of a few hundred tabs. Sort options like the ones mentioned in another comment here about the date added, and additionally grouping links by domain, would also be useful.

[weaksauce]

I hope it is useful for you! The favicon is actually already displayed but I didn't update the example gif yet.

Sorting by the date added/visited is a planed feature but a little tougher to get from firefox so it will take a little bit of work. The extension actually has a group by domain sort(but not strictly group by domain as it's grouped by window first)

[chongli]

I use tab groups as well and I have hundreds of tabs spread among all the groups. I like this feature but manual organization of the tabs still feels slow and cumbersome. It also tends to be really slow to first open up due to the huge numbers of thumbnails involved.

[thewhitetulip]

I think that Firefox has the features by default, if you start typing site or text which matches to any tab which is currently open, then it'll open the current one rather than start a new one.

[syrrim]

I use tabs, but have them organized into a vertical tree. This allows many more to be visible at a time. Since they are in a sidebar, you interface with them like bookmarks, but they don't spawn a new tab when clicked. Because they are organized into a tree structure, its easy to recall the purpose of each.

For example, a search engine tab might lead to a stackoverflow tab which might lead to a few documentation tabs. As long as you remember what the documentarion is for, you can tell what the SO thread is about, and what is was you searched.

[reitanqild]

Same here. Recently changed from TreeStyleTabs to Tab Tree. The latter has fewer options but seems to work better and be more stable on my setup. (Firefox/Firefox Developer Edition, settings synced between all of them.)

[lobster_johnson]

For years my wishlist item is a project manager that can treat a single window as a project. A bit like a stateful, window-oriented Delicious/Pinboard.

For example, say I'm looking for a sofa to buy. I might open the ones I like in a bunch of tabs to mull over. However, if I'm at work, I'd like to just close the window. Since the project manager has associated the window with a project, I can just close the window. Later, I select "Sofa hunting" from the Projects menu and off I go with the same set of tabs.

I'd go one step further: Think of the project as a "pile of bookmarks" where the visible set of tabs is a subset of all boomarked tabs. For example, say I find a nice sofa. I add it to the pile and close the tab. The project now includes that URL, but it won't open a tab for it unless I go into the project browser and find it there and open it. So this disassociates the tab from the bookmark, but retains the "working set" that is my project session. Similar to how an IDE or editor might preserve which files I have open, but still maintain my entire project.

There are some extensions out there that do similar things, but don't get the ergonomics right. There's a couple of "session managers", but they are dumb: You "load" a session, and then "save" it. Changing the window doesn't automatically update the session, and closing the window destroys your session. Safari also lets you bookmark a bunch of tabs as a folder and reopen them again, but there's no link between the folder and the open window.

I once started on an extension like this for Safari, but the current browser extension APIs aren't great. For example, I'd want to sync the projects with something like iCloud, so that they're available on all devices; but I don't think there's a way to do this without involving a server app. I might try again, though.

[smhenderson]

I love "bookmark all tabs" commands. I tend to open a lot of related tabs and run out of time like the OP but I don't leave the all open, I bookmark them all with a few clicks and move on...

But I agree about the UI in general. My habit seems to require some monthly to quarterly clean up to keep it from getting to be too much.

[jasikpark]

https://pinboard.io works relatively well as a way to save links for later.

[freehunter]

You mean https://pinboard.in?

[Jaruzel]

I use a hand-cranked version of this, and have been for over 10 years, I call it WebBookmarks.

It's a small bookmarklet that when clicked takes the current tabs URL and adds it as an escaped param onto the WebBookmarks URL and launches WebBookmarks. Then in the WebBookmarks form the Title and URL are already filled in, I assign a category, and click save. Job done.

I do this and do not use local machine bookmarks at all, as I use so many different machines (linux, windows, tablet, phone etc) during the course of a week, that keeping all those locally stored bookmarks in sync would be a nightmare.

It works for me, although I've not touched the code in forever so it's looking a bit dated - simply because it's rock solid.

It surprises me that more people don't do this.

[solnyshok]

chrome, firefox, and, recently, opera - all do sync your bookmarks across devices/OSes. Do not know about safari, since I do not use Apple products.

[Jaruzel]

And have the browser makers profile my habits? No thank you.

[pas]

it should (would?) look like a tree (or more precisely a forest), that'd show how you explored things, with text saved and indexed, and with the option to save even full pages too (for the last ~week or so).

it should be integrated with history (and the back button should not just show a dumb list on right click)

[scottmf]

No one seems to have mentioned Safari's "Reading List".