Advice for dealing with "tab Hell" in your browser.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7378171

by theotown • 12 years ago

8 14 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

So, I've got like 50 tabs open in 4 windows in Chrome. It's become a standard thing for me. How do I manage this better? I'm going down the path to the dark side here. Kinda sucks. First world problems at their pinnacle!

omgmog• 12 years ago

A co-worker of mine has the same issue, I pointed them towards this article: http://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2013/08/13/7-handy-chrome-ex...

There are plenty of extension options for dealing with tabs, and consolidating them to a meta-list like that is a lot better than having them open as running processes the whole time if you're not using them.

theotown2• 12 years ago

Thanks, will check this out. But it's kinda like taking the antidote from the poisoner :-D

davidy123• 12 years ago

You're in luck; this is the emerging age of ultra wide screen monitors. Today there's 21:9, with two or three of those you should be fine for the next few weeks.

auganov• 12 years ago

If you're not doing it get in the habit of using kbd shortcuts for tab navigation. Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab. Makes navigating a window with a lot of tabs much easier. Close tabs with Ctrl-W. I never really touch the tab bar with my mouse, so it's not a huge issue. Chrome also has Ctrl-1,2,3,4,5,6 etc for quick jumps. And just press Ctrl-Shift-W once in a while (-;

theotown2• 12 years ago

Yep, definitely using keyboard shortcuts almost exclusively. My problem is simply having too many open tabs that "I need".

Pyrodogg• 12 years ago

Focus a bit more on the underlying problem of "I need" than on methods of tab organization. I've occasionally described browser crashes where I completely lose tab-state as something akin to a forest fire. Immediately devastating, but ultimately beneficial for the forest.

Go through your tabs one-by-one and spend a moment with it. Look at it. Try to remember why you got there in the first place. What rabbit hole were you exploring? Why are you reluctant to set this tool down?

What is your brain associating this tab to? Consider making a bookmark folder for that topic. Append your own personal keywords to the page title. Chrome has a search for bookmarks, use it.

I find this process to be insanely beneficial. I'm generally reluctant to let anything go and need to spends few conscious moments 'saying goodbye' to things like these to free me from worry. I now practice zero-tolerance new browser session at work each morning. At home I have one Chrome instance with ~5 tabs on average.

tummybug• 12 years ago

I use tab groups for arranging my tabs in groups, the shortcut Ctrl+` can be used for cycling through tab groups. This along with the other shortcuts mentioned make dealing with lots of tabs a lot less painful.

vijucat• 12 years ago

Firefox user here : I use the in-built (as in no add-on needed) Tab Groups, and cut down on tabs by revisiting groups and using an approximate LRU algorithm : if you don't use it, lose it.

stoolio• 12 years ago

Get OneTab https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbo...

You click a button and it saves a list of your open tabs. You can sort and organize your tab list(s) and even prevent it from storing dupes.

It is basically a glorified bookmarking solution.

Just try it for a few days. When things get out of hand, click the button. Boom, no more tabs. You will be surprised how often you go back to read those tabs you needed (for me, almost never). You can go and search when you remember a month later about that one site about that thing (via ctrl-f broswer search on the onetab tab).

Some have complained that no "tab history" is stored, but for me, I don't need any of that. I just need to know that my tabs are saved so I can feel safe closing them. I have a problem...

OneTab gives me one button to click that gives me peace of mind, and more memory. I even use it for most of my bookmarking needs, since it is so flexible.

TheLoneWolfling• 12 years ago

Any alternative for Firefox?

namlem• 12 years ago

Tree style tabs us different, but it's what I use to manage my tabs.

Andr0meda• 12 years ago

Unsure about chrome, but in Firefox having a single click button to close all tabs without closing the browser, helps dramatically.

koberstein• 12 years ago

Close some tabs.

Advice for dealing with "tab Hell" in your browser.

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