mohanr

I tried solving this problem a while back - using a task based approach - where you create a meta-tab for a logical task and organize tabs under it. You can close, open, suspend, archive tasks. History, bookmarks and other browsing artifacts are associated with tasks. Sadly I couldn't take it beyond prototyping. I have made multiple attempts to - but failed.

* [A task based web browser - Conquering information overload](http://www.slideshare.net/mohanrajrm/a-taskfocused-approach-...)

* [A task-focused approach to support sharing and interruption recovery in web browsers](http://vimeo.com/9088447)

I am still waiting for a plugin which allows me to impose a efficient low-cost organisation layer over tabs (have made multiple feeble attempts to do a plugin which helps organize tabs using mind-maps, a org structure that is my personal favorite). I have tried almost all plugins over the years which could potentially solve this for me - but have not been successful in finding one that fits my needs.

I did try this one for some time before The great suspender (https://github.com/deanoemcke/thegreatsuspender/).

IMO the great suspender is better at solving this problem for me because (recalling from memory my experience with tabmemfree couple of weeks back):

1. The great suspender retains a visual snapshot of the page (along with title, favicon etc) thus helping me jog my memory about what the tab is about.

2. It uses a internal chrome:// URL to park the suspended tabs instead of using an external URL (http://). I am not saying that the developer of tabmemfree could be spying on the URLs being parked. But I am just not comfortable with the idea of parking my tabs using an external http service.

3. An explicit text format white list rather than relying on pinned tabs (which makes me lose the tab position, title etc).

4. Explicit option to suspend a tab or group of tabs (and bring them out of suspension) - instead of just relying on time-outs to suspend a tab.

There are better extensions out there solving this problem. One I use is https://github.com/deanoemcke/thegreatsuspender/

It frees memory by taking a snapshot of the page and loading the image (instead of the DOM). This frees up a great amount of memory. It also persists the tab position, title, favicon (which are essential to me in remembering information about the tab). Clicking (or pressing Enter, F5 ..) on the image preview loads the page.

You can set tabs to be automatically suspended after a predefined amount of time. You can set tabs to be restored automatically on focus (unfortunately no time delay option here). You can white-list domains from auto-suspension.

For Chrome v25 users: The extension is having some stability issues which causes Chrome to crash (https://github.com/deanoemcke/thegreatsuspender/issues/30). But if you are using any version before that, it should work fine. It had become an indispensable tool for a tab hoarder like me. Waiting for the dev to fix the current issue with Chrome v25.