How do I manage tons of browser tabs?

August 7, 2007 2:16 AM

How do you manage a lot of open browser tabs?

I spend most of my workday in a web browser. I typically work on about a dozen problems in parallel, for each of which I tend to have a dozen open tabs -knowledge base articles, bug descriptions, manuals. My work requires that I am able to switch context almost instantly, for example if a person I'm working with calls in for one of the problems I'm working on.

Switching between context costs a lot of time in itself, but losing context, i.e. having to search again for the pages I had opened, is prohibitively expensive in terms of productivity.

How would you handle this? I've tried with bookmarking (bookmark all tabs in firefox), but it doesn't work well as new tabs get added to and deleted from one set. There's a tab group extension, but it breaks things like changing tabs via Ctrl-Tab.

posted by dhoe to Computers & Internet (19 answers total)

I don't do it often, but if I am working on more than one or two problems at once, I will tend to open up one browser window per context. For example, a browser window will be dedicated to a certain oracle issue or patch, with a number of tabs open to appropriate sites. Another window might be for my work on certain scripts, with tabs to references that might be useful. Switching contexts in this sense is as simple as switching windows. If I need to take off for the day, I can bookmark all tabs and restore them the next morning in their appropriate windows.

Simple and straightforward but it works for me.
posted by splice at 3:01 AM on August 7, 2007

Best answer: I use copy all urls and maintain plain text files of lists of URLs grouped by topic. I can then run de-dupe and sort queries on the file and load them up as and when.
posted by dance at 3:02 AM on August 7, 2007

Multiple monitors and collections of bookmarks. My computer has 3 monitors, and when I am working at full bandwidth each contains one or more browsers (among other programs), each of which contains a number of tabs relevant to a specific context. If I get far afield of an open context, I use 'Bookmark All Tabs...' to drop those tabs into a set of bookmarks in Firefox's bookmark toolbar. These can then be opened simultaneously with the 'Open All in Tabs' menu option when I need them again.

Ultramon is an indispensable tool for handling multiple monitors.
posted by foobario at 3:03 AM on August 7, 2007

I guess you're not on a Mac, but there is a Mac browser called OmniWeb that has a "workspaces" feature whereby you can save groups of tabs. You can even quit the browser if you want and come back to your workspaces later.
Is there something similar in the PC world?
posted by bluebird at 3:11 AM on August 7, 2007

One browser window per focus is what I tend to do.
posted by Meagan at 3:15 AM on August 7, 2007

In IE7, on the tab bar on the left, is a button that has the popup tip "Quick Tabs". If you click that it brings up miniature versions of all the tabs you currently have open. If you're at all visually oriented, it's easy to remember and find the one you want. (You can also get it by hitting Control-Q.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 3:46 AM on August 7, 2007

Opera tabs appear only in one window. You can open multiple windows with multiple tabs. Sounds exactly like what you need. Great browser otherwise, too.
posted by FauxScot at 4:44 AM on August 7, 2007

The single greatest productivity boost regarding Ctrl+Tabbing is the preservation of "last used tab order."

It will seriously confuse you for a little bit, but it works fundamentally just like a Windows system Alt + Tab, reordering to what was most recently used.

If you have any quantity of tabs open (and I have 7 open and I'm just browsing around; light usage for me), Ctrl + Tabbing through 12+ is a nightmare, even using shift to go backwards.
Tab Mix Plus handles that and a bunch of other things, though no tab groups or anything like that.

My other suggestion is to make good use of the Bookmarks Toolbar, which exists beneath your address bar. I use mine with JUST favicons (no descriptions) for my most visited sites. It lets you group them into folders, as well, and you can open all the links in a given folder at any time into tabs.
posted by disillusioned at 5:05 AM on August 7, 2007

Ctrl + Tabbing through 12+ is a nightmare, even using shift to go backwards.

Not that it would help with any over 9 (and above 6 is probably out of the question), but you can to CTRL + [number key] to move to a specific tab. You probably already know, but I figured I'd throw it out there.
posted by yerfatma at 5:21 AM on August 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'd throw in a recommendation for the Viamatic FoXpose extension for firefox, which does what SDB describes QuickTabs doing for IE7. Makes a happy little page with active thumbs of each of the tabs. You can close various tabs from this page and otherwise sort things graphically. Only problem: it's yet another tab. I tend to use this feature in connection with Zotero (FF extension or standalone) to manage lots of multifaceted research projects with lots of tabs and even across multiple browser windows.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 5:43 AM on August 7, 2007

Google toolbar has a Notebook feature that allows you to clip and save all kinds of things. In Google search results, each listing carries a Note This slug that will instantly add the URL to your "Notebook". Multiple Notebooks can be set up.
posted by beagle at 6:20 AM on August 7, 2007

Firefox Showcase helps. Visual organization of tabs, using thumbnails of each. Select one or more and open them in new window. Combine tabs from several windows into one. Close or rearrange tabs across multiple windows or within one window. It's a great add-on if you're using Firefox already.
posted by caution live frogs at 6:55 AM on August 7, 2007

I use scrolling tabs, instead of shrinking-down-to-nothing tabs. You can't look at everything at once, but it's often easier to find things. In addition, I use Faviconize Tabs to make the "main" tab for each logical group small, and use the small tabs as end makers for groups (anything about castles goes directly to the right of the iconized list-of-castles Wikipedia article, for example).

Also the beta version of ColourfulTabs (beta page seems to be not available at the moment, sorry, but should come back) will give tabs a colour based on the domain, which helps to group them visually (ask tabs, for example, are the salmon coloured ones).

Also the other day I saw FishEye Tabs which I haven't tried but you might find useful.
posted by anaelith at 7:08 AM on August 7, 2007

For those of us who can't afford multiple monitors, there's always Microsoft's Virtual Desktop Manager. It sits in the taskbar with four icons, each one brings up a new desktop. I've been using that quite a bit for staying organized - one desktop per task. (Most often, I have one desktop for work stuff and one for my personal stuff - it's been a great help in preventing me from getting distracted by random surfing!)
posted by Banky_Edwards at 7:24 AM on August 7, 2007

I guess you're not on a Mac, but there is a Mac browser called OmniWeb that has a "workspaces" feature whereby you can save groups of tabs.

SafariStand supports this as well for Safari via a shelf you can save window/tab snapshots to. It also automatically saves the "last" workspace.

Unfortunately, if you're using Safari 3, the alpha is very alpha (read: unstable).
posted by mkultra at 7:57 AM on August 7, 2007

iam currently using opera and it might help in your situation.

When you have multiple tabs open.. you can save them as sessions to come back whenever you want to, can also manage multiple sessions.

Navigating multiple tabs can be done with the mousewheel.

hold right click and it will display the tabs you have open and you can use the mousewheel to navigate to the right tab.

Additionally there is a note feature,

right click an amount of text and copy to note.
You can revisit that website anytime by double clicking the note in the panel.

Bookmarking pages is easier and you can have a nickname for each bookmark. Just type the nickname you assigned in the address bar and it will take you to that page

Hopefully that helps
posted by radsqd at 9:22 AM on August 7, 2007

The Session Manager add-on for Firefox is pretty useful. It saves all windows and tabs in the event of a crash or close and you can also save the session and load it later.

In your situation I'd probably keep one browser window open per project with all tabs for that project. You might even combine that with additional desktops (easy on Linux but from above it sounds like you can do that on Windows as well). Maybe each desktop for similar projects.
posted by 6550 at 11:44 AM on August 7, 2007

I'd really recommend considering del.icio.us and the del.icio.us toolbar for Firefox. When I've got research task like ypurs going on, I just designate a specific tag to use for anything related to the topic, like "Digital_Trends_070807", and then just label anything I find.

With the Firefox extension, you can then open all the pages with a given tag, just like you can with a bookmarks folder. (As a bonus, the toolbar lets you specify "favorite" tags, that appear as pull-down menus in the bar, just like the "Bookmarks" toolbar. I don't even use the "official" bookmarks toolbar in Firefox any more--I just install the del.icio.us bar on the machines I use, and my bookmarks/tags are automatically synchronized across all of them.)
posted by LairBob at 6:43 PM on August 7, 2007

I know I'm not the first to suggest this here, but try using Opera rather than FireFox. You can have multiple windows with multiple tabs open at once, and you can save multiple sessions, each with multiple tabs and/or windows, as well. Additionally, the tabs can be placed on any side you want; I keep them on the left, personally, which allows for the ability to read what each tab is once I have more than five. There is also the option to extend the tab bar once you fill it with tabs (yes, it's possible. Heh.)

Two lifesaving features for me are the fact that your current session is automatically saved if Opera is closed for any reason, and there's a closed tabs button in case you accidentally get rid of something you shouldn't have. (I know this sounds a lot like browser history, but it's very straightforward: just a list of the last twenty or so pages you closed. You can open any of them up with a single click. I feel like an advertisement...)

Also, the tab bar can be hidden and brought back easily (although this may be a custom button I found; I can't quite remember). Navigation between tabs by keyboard is easier than firefox as well: control+tab brings up a chronological list, so you know which tab you're going to, and if you want to simply move to the next or previous tab in the order they are open, rather than the order they've been visited, you can use the 1 and 2 keys.

I've only been using this browser for a few months, and I'm already something of a fangirl. I'll be glad to answer any further questions you have about its usability, and if you want to check it out, you can find it for free at opera.com.
posted by mismatched at 1:27 PM on August 8, 2007