[matznerd]

How can you do research without going beyond 10 tabs? I typically go horizontal. If i'm trying to solve problem, will middle click on top 5 results etc and go through them until problem solved. Then there is research on various topics that require deep dives into papers, those papers then have citations that require other papers or open up other queries. Then going through email generate various links that I need to see, via google alerts, groups etc, and that doesn't even get started with links generated out of hn/reddit etc. How do you get away with less than 10 tabs? I also use multiple tab managing plugins not just for memory, but for searching between open tabs, and then to manage and collapse entire windows etc...

[ryanSrich]

My workflow for research is like this:

- open link, determine if it’s relevant or not. If it’s relevant, but not relevant right now, I’ll dump it into my notes.

- then I close the tab. Pretty simple.

- when the time comes where that link is relevant again, I’ll find it in my notes and open it.

- I really don’t find any value in having tabs open that aren’t immediately relevant to what I’m doing. 10 seems like the upper limit of focus for me.

[pessimizer]

> I really don’t find any value in having tabs open that aren’t immediately relevant to what I’m doing. 10 seems like the upper limit of focus for me.

It's clear that you do understand the value of preserving tabs that aren't immediately relevant to what you're doing. What's the difference in value between writing tabs in your notes and simply not closing them?

I'd understand if there weren't tree-style tabs - you can organize things better in your notes. There are tree-style tabs, though, so you can organize your tabs as you need them, and dropping into a root node is just like dropping into an old thought process.

[chipotle_coyote]

I'm not the OP, but I almost never have a lot of tabs open, because to me "keep multiple windows each with dozens of tabs open" isn't organization any more than "keep dozens of icons on your desktop" is organization. Some people love that, but I can't find anything that way. And every implementation of tree-style tabs I've seen is -- again, to me, personal preference, YMMV, fill in your favorite disclaimer -- a hot mess. More to the point, it's still "keep multiple windows each with dozens of tabs open wait don't close the window reflexively OH NO YOU CLOSED IT FLAIL FLAIL UNDO HIT THE HISTORY UN-ERASER BUTTON WHEW IT'S BACK". Jesus. No. OMG stop.

Seriously, though, it's just a different way of working. If I want to save a link because I'm genuinely going to need it later, I save the link. More often than not, it just goes in the drafts or annotations for the article that I'm working on at that moment. If not, I save it in GoodLinks, where I get a title and a summary and tagging and syncing across my laptop and desktop and iPad.

I get that I'm an anomaly these days, and that "if you have less than 50 tabs open across three windows you're an amateur" is the norm among technonerds. (That is an actual quote from a friend.) But I am pretty sure the Venn diagram of the all-the-tabs-all-the-time folks I know and the "which tab is it? nope, nope, nope, I'm sure it's here somewhere" folks I know is essentially a perfect circle.

[ryanSrich]

> What's the difference in value between writing tabs in your notes and simply not closing them?

Well, one is indexed, searchable, tagged, and available whenever and wherever I want.

The other is ephemeral and maybe, hopefully I can find it and maybe hopefully I didn’t close it out, and maybe hopefully I remember the name so I can find it in my search history.

Managing tabs with useful info instead of writing them down sounds like a living nightmare.

[Joeri]

I drag excess tabs into their own windows to group them by subtopic. Too many tabs makes it too hard to track what all the tabs are. When there are more than 2 windows of 10 tabs I’ll move over to collecting and grouping annotated links in notes.