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Locking this post. Pretty sure everything that's needed to be said has been said so threads are devolving.
who does that?!
How can it be in any way useful to keep 7000 open tabs?
Has she not heard of bookmarks?
I am thoroughly confused
I have a practical but niche answer to this. This is actually a bit of a wall of text but tldr: Not quite a power-user. Got 1.5k tabs, Bookmarks and Browser history lack proper system and contextual integration, are a poor experience to review, navigate, categorize for me, and many integrations make tabs effortless to work with, group up, and accumulate. Looking a bit into other systems and I can definitely see benefits but what I have works pretty well for me.
I'm not as much of a poweruser but I generally will have between 800 and 1,500 tabs open on my desktop with Floorp which is a Firefox fork with native web app support and a bunch of neat customization features. This is mainly because I find history and bookmarking features to be rather inconvenient to maintain especially for deep internet rabbitholes and complex projects that can have multiple topics or differing levels of priority to reference. Firefox and Floorp allow users to instantly search through their tabs using the search bar and this tends to be very helpful although I also will like to have older versions of websites cached or loaded locally so I can make comparisons, review through collections of tasks and their related segments which I have previously worked on, or see how homepages and different segments of the web have adapted as a whole or personalized for me over time. I can basically have my own pocket of the Internet curated for me which I don't need to go out of my way to find or maintain.
Now something to note is that it's a surprisingly efficient process, Most of the tabs themselves don't need to actually be active in memory with the browser in total generally using less than 8 gigabytes of ram and under 10% of my cpu when active. I have plenty of tab management extensions, Floorp provides a scroll bar at the top for multi-row tabs, Flow Launcher (ridiculously powerful search tool which can be run as a system-wide programmable hotkey.) within Windows has integration both for checking existing tabs and instantly opening new ones. It's pretty slick except when my browser is first rebuilding after a full reboot as that can take around two minutes to complete from disk.
I think the main thing at least for me is just that other resources and tools (Been looking into the raindrop bookmark manager.) might be more efficient for me to learn in the long run but I tend to be working on dozens of projects at once anyways and actively going out of my way to adapt to a new system like that would be counterproductive in the moment where it counts.
Hope this has been a helpful and insightful look into my process. I could probably attach screenshots or video later although I feel like this is sufficient as-is.
The article explains that she likes to look at tabs in the past as a reminder of something she was interested in.
It’s sort of a snapshot in time. I get it. But hell no I’m closing tabs.
Man if only firefox had some kinda feature that you could see your previous activity. Something akin to a history of what you did in the browser.
"Look, just add in an option to re-enable spacebar heating."
I have 4 virtual desktops, usually each with their own Firefox instance. I still have less than 10 tabs open.
YOU DON'T NEED THAT MANY TABS
How do you deal with Firefox updates?
I type yay
You can bookmark a whole window full of tabs all into a single bookmark folder. It's called "bookmark all tabs" or something like that. Then later you can open all of them again into a new window using a single button again.
I know the average person isn't tech savvy, but this loss is almost entirely on themself. If you have 7000 tabs open and it's important to you that they stay saved, then it's on you to simply ASK someone if keeping them open is an ok way to do it
This is hoarder behaviour, so I wouldn’t expect it to make sense as a general statement
Why do you need to “save” a tab? If you’re never going to look at it again what is the point?
I can understand someone who has 20-30 tabs. They’ll probably go back to at least one of them. But 7000???? There is nothing to save it’s an impossible rats nest with zero organization so the likelihood of reopening even one of those tabs is virtually zero. So in this case what’s the purposing of “saving” these tabs?
Sometimes you actually do go back to those saved tabs. There's no way to know ahead of time which tabs you're actually gonna go back to and which you won't, so it's perfectly reasonable to save groups of tabs if there was a topic you were researching or whatever. Just save the tabs into a new bookmark folder with a descriptive name so you can find it later.
But with that said, 7000 is way beyond including just the things a person might ever actually want to go back to later.
I... Just search the history. It's there for a reason
Is this a new mental illness I haven't heard of?
In an interview with PCMag, Hazel said she keeps all those tabs open because she likes “to scroll back and see clusters of tabs from months ago — it’s like a trip down memory lane on whatever I was doing/learning about/thinking about.” So, when she recovered her 7,000+ tab browsing session, she said, “I feel like a part of me is restored.”
Actually that's kinda cool. I shouldn't be a hater.
But... Firefox has a history feature that would serve her purpose much better?
No it's probably s mental illness or something. If she like the tabs as a memoir thing, she should do what people have done on vacations for decades - take pictures (aka here as screenshots or saved pages).
So not archiving these memories in the way you would determines whether or not it is a mental illness? How is taking photos any mpre or less of a mental illness than leaving the tabs open?
Seems like quite the jump to conclusion to assume it is a mental illness.
You're literally describing windows recall
No, literally describing pressing the "print screen" button
Do people not know about browsing history?
I don’t understand people who use a million tabs. Most I’ll have is like ten. And that’s if I’m deep in a problem in a project. I hate clutter
some people visit many different sites, continuously throughout the day, and it doesn't make sense to keep reopening tabs, plus then you forget about it
I'll say it again - anyone who needs (or let's be honest, thinks they need) hundreds of thousands of open tabs has something wrong with their brain and should probably see a professional about it.
Isn't it just hoarding but in digital space?
I've been betrayed early enough and often enough to take monthly backups of my profile and export tab lists as text files. Just in case.
All of you going 'well that's not my use case' don't have to get it, you just have to shut up and let us do our thing. Yours is the same aggravating attitude as 'so what if the computer reboots to forcibly update?' Listen: go to whatever physical space you've carefully organized, dump all that shit onto the floor, and then pick it back up piece by piece to make it right again. How you feel doing that is how we feel several times a month.
How you feel doing that is how we feel several times a month.
Because you're doing something dumb. That's really all there is to it.
I am using software in a way that suits my intent.
The ability to do this is one of the reasons I choose this software.
Do you think they're adding vertical tabs for you people with six of them?
I am using software in a way that suits my intent.
Against the intentions of that software. Square peg, round hole.
Mozilla has proudly advertised testing how Firefox handles hundreds of tabs.
There's not some upper limit. A computer remembering a hundred things has not been impressive since the days of drum memory. Open tabs in a restored session are barely more than bookmarks.
It can handle them just fine -- they're meant to be impermanent. They never claimed you can keep hundreds of tabs open forever.
I can hammer in nails with the back of a screwdriver. That doesn't make it the right tool for the job.
Sessions aren't restored by coincidence. They're meant to be persistent - that's why there's a mature and stress-tested feature to keep them persistent.
Go whine at someone expecting their hammer to work on a thousand nails. They don't write on the packaging that it'll work that long! It's only designed for a couple dozen nails, and then you throw it out.
Tabs also need to be closed occasionally for major updates. You know how I know that? Because it happens regularly enough that you're here whining about it.
You're welcome to keep banging your head against that wall, but if you publically whine about how it hurts your forehead, people are gonna tell you its your own fault. And they're right.
The browser needs to be closed. The tabs persist... because they're saved, and then restored. You know how I know that? Because I've been doing it for TWENTY FUCKING YEARS.
When that goes wrong, it's the software fucking up. Same as deleting your bookmarks, forgetting all your passwords, or erasing your whole profile. All of which I've also dealt with, and if someone told me I'm stupid for calling that an error, I'd slap them.
I'm not fighting anything except your ignorant horseshit comments - the software works how I want. Only you whiners think it's not supposed to. Like Mozilla made it work this way by accident. Fell ass-backwards onto increasingly reliable session restore options.
The tabs persist... because they're saved, and then restored. You know how I know that? Because I've been doing it for TWENTY FUCKING YEARS.
Obviously you haven't though, right? Or you wouldn't be here complaining about how that doesn't work...
I'm not fighting anything except your ignorant horseshit comments - the software works how I want.
And yet you're here bitching about how it doesn't. Make it make sense.
When that goes wrong, it’s the software fucking up. Same as deleting your bookmarks, forgetting all your passwords, or erasing your whole profile. All of which I’ve also dealt with, and if someone told me I’m stupid for calling that an error, I’d slap them.
When something is true for all browsers and happens "several times a month" -- thats not a glitch. That's how it works.
You're quoting where I mentioned forced reboots. That's not how this works. On the rare occasions where Firefox fucks up your profile in any way - it's an event, and it's a problem.
So rare that you have to bitch and moan about it
Y'all are bitching and moaning at us. I am telling you why you should stop.
The browser already works how I want. Has done for ages. Mozilla specifically tests for it. But for some goddamn reason, you think that's wrong.
Nobody is bitching or moaning at you lol.
We're mocking you for spiraling out about a problem you've created for yourself. While you somehow also simultaneously claim its not a problem and works just fine.
this shit is dumb
You have a terrible workflow.
Square peg, round hole.
I can hammer in nails with the back of a screwdriver.
people are gonna tell you its your own fault. And they’re right.
That's just what people have said to me, personally, in this thread. Including you. The rest of the thread is worse:
Firefox fixes someones mental illness…
Is this a new mental illness I haven’t heard of?
anyone who needs (or let’s be honest, thinks they need) hundreds of thousands of open tabs has something wrong with their brain and should probably see a professional about it.
AKA User was so stupid, he or she should better not use a computer in the first place.
I have only ever been responding to y'all bitching about us. I am explaining, more politely than your conduct deserves, how and why this is exactly what Firefox is for. Mozilla explicitly tests for it. The feature is right there, on purpose, and works fine. It only fucks up the same way Firefox can fuck up the bookmarks y'all keep telling people to use.
Losing data is bad, actually.
I started taking backups of my profile because Reddit Enhancement Suite kept losing all my settings. You wanna whine at me that settings aren't meant to be persistent, and I should reconfigure every plugin each time I start my browser? Because the difference between that list of options and the list of open tabs is next to nothing.
That's just what people have said to me, personally, in this thread. Including you. The rest of the thread is worse:
Yes, that was the mocking I was referring to, champ. Good work.
For the rest, I'm seeing you taking comments about a dumb workflow so personally you had to make your own comment and then spiral out when people start mocking you.
Its a dumb workflow, you look silly for defending it. Touch grass.
'We're not bitching and moaning, we're just verbally abusing you for using software as intended.'
Hey look, the block button.
God speed and keep smacking your head against that wall.
