Comment by wenc
2 years ago
Question: do people who open tons of tabs ever middle-click to open a bunch of tabs to follow a rabbit hole? If so, how do you keep track of which tabs you've already seen?
Example: When I read a Wiki page, I middle-click on links to open up a bunch of tabs to read in sequence. After I read each tab, I close them so that I remember I've read them.
I can't think of a workflow in which I would keep tabs open -- seems like I would lose track of what I've read and what I haven't. How do many-tab people not lose track?
I use a 2 step process for this.
1. I installed an extension (can't remember the name) that makes visited links (from history) purple (like the old times) so that I won't reopen a duplicate tab
2. After reading a page I add them to bookmarks in a specific (have read) folder so that they're marked by the star in Firefox URL bar and I can easily check if I've already read them just by looking
Nobody is literally _never_ closing tabs. I might open a couple dozen tabs, closing them as I finish or otherwise determine that I won't want to refer to them again, and leave open the ones that I haven't finished or which I _do_ want to refer to again.
Just to follow up, what is your method for finding those tabs again?
Imagine a scenario where you have 200 tabs open. Unlike bookmarks, they aren’t categorized into folders.
I imagine one can keyword search all open tabs, but that’s kinda like googling them again except you have a filter on what you’ve opened. When would you ever want to do that vs just doing a new google search?
I can sort of imagine having open tabs as a kind of “saved state” when doing research without the additional hassle of curating bookmarks (adding/deleting/classifying). But just curious if people think of it this way.
Windows are folders, and they're spread out across monitors and workspaces. My taskbar is a wide strip on the side of one monitor so it can easily list about 20 or so windows.
The organization is basically that of a desk with stacks of papers on it: impenetrable to others maybe, but completely logical to me.