[superkuh]

I haven't tried Firefox since version 47 and haven't used it as my main since 37. I gave 61 (dev edition) a spin yesterday. All the extensions that make the browser usable for me were like 1990s geocities pages: "Under Construction" if they existed at all. They were just placeholders that lacked most features with links to bugzilla pages to vote for features to be added back into Firefox.

Garbage collection was pretty terrible too. I managed to use up 4 GB of ram with ~10 tabs. In my normal (firefox fork) browser I run 300 active/loaded tabs and 700 'suspended' tabs for ~1k total and never get that high.

There's seemingly still a lot of work to be done before it's usable as a main browser.

[hiram112]

I know everyone has there own work flows, but how can you even keep track of that many tabs?

After about 8 or 9, I find myself tabbing through half of a dozen tabs to get where I'm going, and at that point I realize I've added like 5 new tasks to my original stack of todos or research or whatever I was originally doing. At that point it's time to shut some tabs and concentrate on the original item.

Also, once I've logged into, for example, GMail or Facebook, I do not want to be browsing other sites while under their eye. I instead usually open multiple Chromiums / Chrome, each app for a specific task.

[Sylos]

> I know everyone has there own work flows, but how can you even keep track of that many tabs?

You don't.

You just push new tabs onto the stack. When you're done with a topic, you start popping those tabs until you're back at the previous topic.

Then that previous topic is either something unrelated which you wanted to read later, so you just leave it there. Or it's whatever you were researching before you had to look up something that's mentioned in the text, meaning that you now know this thing and can continue working on the previous topic.

You never have to know what your tabs to the left contain. You only care for the last handful of tabs to the right, which you can use as if those tabs to the left wouldn't exist (well, on Firefox at least, on Chrome they become unreadable).

As for GMail and Facebook, check out these:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-cont...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai...

Or the more generic variant:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

[superkuh]

I've been doing large sessions ever since Opera introduced tabs in my teen years (2000). It's how I grew up and second nature now.

Tabs are great because they provide context both as a span of tabs showing how I got from point A to point B and as individual tab due to tab history backwards. I've been regularly saving my session files since ~2001 although I only have data from 2003 onward. It's great to load up an old one and see what I was doing on some old date.

http://superkuh.com/number-of-tabs-vs-date-2003.png (2003-2006) http://superkuh.com/number-of-tabs-vs-date-2017.png (2013-2017)

Nowdays the first couple hundred are almost static over a year or two. They are things I always want to have open. The most recent ~300 or so are in flux from week to week. There is a gradient. The older tabs and their favicons/etc form a landscape I know and can navigate just by a glance. The newer ones I can see the general topic of a group/span of tabs by clicking in and using tab search. I also use minimal browser skins/layouts to pack the max amount of tabs in.

Every couple months I'll go through and "clean" up a session by closing some and bookmarking others. The tabs that make it through this are added to the static landscape of useful things for current projects. Kind of like how sedimentary rock is layed down in layers.

Every year or two I'll start a new session. It always feels so directionless.

I do not use 'web app' sites like gmail or Facebook.

[wlesieutre]

Tree style tabs addon makes huge numbers of tabs useable, you really rethink the whole tab workflow.

For logging into sites like gmail and Facebook, consider using Containers https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-facebook-container-...

[Izkata]

Hoo yeah, before TreeStyleTabs, I limited myself to somewhere around 30-40 just because there wasn't room to see everything.

Nowadays I'm up somewhere around 300 and it's not a big deal, because they self-organize into related groups that are expandable/collapsible.

[bzbarsky]

> I find myself tabbing through half of a dozen tabs to get where I'm going

Why are you tabbing at all? If you type "* foo" in the url bar (without hitting enter), you will get a list of tabs whose url or title includes "foo". You can select one to jump to it. Much faster than linearly going through tabs.

[hiram112]

that's not working in latest Chrome. I'll do a little searching around as that would help my own workflow quite a bit. Thanks.

[bzbarsky]

> that's not working in latest Chrome

Oh, I was talking about Firefox. Chrome's tab management is ... much worse.

I also typo'd. "* foo" searches bookmarks with "foo" in them. "% foo" searches open tabs.

[ams6110]

I'm the same. When I have enough tabs that I can no longer read the titles/know which tab is which, I start closing tabs.

I don't understand how hundreds of open tabs can be necessary, even if there are tools that make it manageable.

But, to each his own.

[Grumbledour]

That ram usage seems suspicious. I never left firefox, have hundreds of tabs open and never really go over 1,5GB Ram usage. I think you should investigate that further. Maybe one of the pages you open really leaks memory or an extension is at fault here?

[huntie]

What fork are you using and do you use any extensions to manage that many tabs? I have a similar workflow on current Firefox but I find managing that many tabs difficult. I used to use tab groups for this.

[oliwarner]

1000 tabs? Why? How?

[metalliqaz]

He never figured out how to use bookmarks.

[superkuh]

I have about 20k bookmarks.

[dewey]

Do you ever use any of them or get back to them? I used to do that too on a smaller scale but realized after a while that I don't really need them to find things as the browsers address bar is usually enough and worst case I can fall back to a web search.

I never really had a case where I couldn't find something again that I would've found through my bookmarks as these are usually not tagged well or there's not enough information in the URL / title of the bookmark to have a big surface area for a fuzzy search.

It took me a while to realize that but I noticed that it's very refreshing to keep less things around and try to hoard them (bookmarks, browser tabs, downloaded movies, shows, music) like I did in the past. After observing it for a while I realized that it never happened that I couldn't find something again or re-download if necessary.

[superkuh]

I use my bookmarks constantly and I have a well structured folder hierarchy so I don't run into the problems you describe. There is no downside to having lots of bookmarks. It isn't the same as a physical space in which the 'clutter' or 'less is more' ideologies may have merit.

[BuckRogers]

I respect that. It doesn't work for me but it's an interesting thought. Props on being able to arrange it successfully. Says some positive things about you by extension.

I only keep bookmarks that are really important or used often, the latter which doesn't really make sense but when I want food I open up my Food folder and looking at places around me helps me pick something.

[megous]

URL bar search uses bookmarks, and they also make search useful even after clearing your history.

[antisthenes]

It was usable as a main browser at some point between 4.0 and the current quantum (read - when 90% of the useful extensions were axed and the only advantage over chrome was thrown out)

I can't tell whether it's mostly web 2.1's fault or Firefox's gross mismanagement and stubbornness

[jamesgeck0]

Firefox still has an edge over Chrome here; Mozilla continues to add new Web Extension APIs for frequently-requested functionality. For example, this release added tab hiding, making it possible to build extensions that add Panorama tab groups.

Anyway, maintaining the old extension API wasn't sustainable. Many older extensions broke repeatedly due to refactoring efforts like Electrolysis. These refactors ultimately resulted in some of Firefox's current speed gains.