[tonoto]

The browser history worked fine while the web still was rather static. Not so much now with dynamically generated pages where the content changes for better ..or worse. A tab, in contrast, keeps its state. There are tools, such as SingleFile, Zotero, Pocket, screenshot, "print/save" to PDF etc.. but depending on content, an open tab is convenient enough.

[kevincox]

Do tabs that are unloaded keep much state? My understanding was that they basically loaded as if a fresh navigation except for some extra form field preservation.

Or is the active state serialized to disk somehow?

[rcxdude]

Not much state is kept: maybe about as much as if you were to navigate to the page again with the back button (which is an annoyingly little nowadays).