This extension makes me sad. Not that this extension isn't done well, but I think the existence of it, and that it's on top of HN reflects a sad state of UI in our browsers.
Let talk about tabs. The reason that tabs exists is because we don't want to switching between windows when we have multiple tabs open. But think about it, why are tabs any better? When I have about a dozen tabs opened on Chrome, all I can see is a tiny favicon. Any more than that I only see an (x). Firefox and Safari are a little better in that their tab bar scrolls, but still only slightly.
The reasons we open multiple tabs is primarily for cross-referencing, and secondarily "preview", i.e. the intermediary state of article quality evaluation, the state between I-dont-want-to-open-this and I-want-to-save-this-for-reading-later, and/or I-like-it-so-much-I-want-to-bookmark-this-for-eternity.
How are tabs, tab ordering, top sites, tab preview thumbnails, tree tabs and any of these incremental "improvements" on tabs going to help us do xref and eval articles?
For cross referencing, I typically open one "root" page, and then drill down to the rest. For this use case, a hierarchical arrangement of pages is probably a good idea. An MRU and/or stack on top of that is even better because maintaining a tree traversal ordering in the head all the time is hard. Too bad FF took this one feature that doesn't scramble my thinking process away years ago. I know there's control tab, but that's not good enough because that's a "cross hierarchy" mechanism. As soon as I click on a tab that belongs to different "group", MRU is messed up. I really want MRU by groups.
To address this, I need to address why I'd click on a different tab in the middle of xrefing a group of tabs. This is usually because I'm taking a break, so I press Cmd-T and introduce a new group. The problem with how tab orderings are typically done now is, what the break is over, I still have a bunch of "pages" opened waiting to be evaled, but I do want to get back to the previous grouping. How do I do that now? My tab bar is full of tabs in various different states now. To solve this problem, I can open a new window and put a new group there, but the problem is, the screen is not that large a laptop, and I frequently maximize my browser. So any extra windows are just going to be hidden in the back and I'll forget about them until a month later.
I don't really need an actual side bar that takes up screen space all the time to show me the hierarchical relationships of tabs. I mean, it's only useful if MRU doesn't do what I want.
I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like the 40 year-old GUI pattern just doesn't work for browsers anymore.
Vertical tabs in tree structure is currently the best way to use web, especially when you pair it with auto-unloading of inactive tabs. I'm also disappointed that nothing better appeared in last few years. Developers seem to be extremely conservative about UI. With WASM it seems that browsers will take over most of OS functionality and the UI is getting in the way.
IMO we should ditch tabs, bookmarks and history. They all implement the same thing - a way to reach a place you've visited before. And they all require to be micromanaged in specific ways. The browser already knows which sites I've visited recently, and all the backtracking and branching I did. This information could be visualized as tree so that I can backtrack to any node and resume browsing on a new branch. The browser should also be doing memory management so that revisiting recent site is as fast as switching to another tab. And while we are at it, why not allow full text search across recently visited sites?
"the best" is an exageration. The web is named so for a reason: it's a graph, not strictly hierarchical. Which is rather difficult to represent in a list format.
For wikipedia e.g. I really want to have a graph instead of a linear history view, in at least 2 dimensions: ordered by time of visit and connection to related articles. I'm kinda ashamed I never got around to make this in 10 years.
> MO we should ditch tabs, bookmarks and history. They all implement the same thing - a way to reach a place you've visited before. And they all require to be micromanaged in specific ways. The browser already knows which sites I've visited recently, and all the backtracking and branching I did. This information could be visualized as tree so that I can backtrack to any node and resume browsing on a new branch. The browser should also be doing memory management so that revisiting recent site is as fast as switching to another tab. And while we are at it, why not allow full text search across recently visited sites?
Yes! This! Essentially, something like Emacs's undo-tree, but representing the tree in a more compact form, using some variant of D3 or Graphviz's tree layout algorithm.
I use tabs as a todo list. For example on HN, I quickly open all the comment pages of headlines that look interesting. Tree-style tabs are excellent for this use case, especially because I can collapse the tree when I need to move onto another task.
> I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like the 40 year-old GUI pattern just doesn't work for browsers anymore.
I think that you open more than one tab right away makes you bit of an outlier. I don't know if they collect this kind of data, but I would be very curious about the median number of tabs is among their users. I suspect most people use their browser in a very serial way. Check Facebook, check email, read the news then walk away.
If that's true, then maybe it's just a matter of priorities and constrained resources. Maybe an extension is where changes to the basic tab functionality belongs.
You've clearly put a lot of thought into this. Have you ever thought about building an extension?
If I'm going to build something I'd be building a new browser. What I'm proposing fundamentally breaks the architecture of modern browsers. To achieve what I want, the first thing I have to do is remove any visible notion of tabs. There is exactly 0 browsers on the market that expose an extension for me to hide the tabs directly.
No one can look at more than one thing at a time, nobody needs tabs, what they need is a browser that fits their workflows, and a browser that exposes an API such that third parties can experiment with page groupings and orderings.
Tabs are for workflow; they're a completely different modality for working with a browser, and it's not about MRU.
The reasons we open multiple tabs is primarily for cross-referencing, and secondarily "preview"
You've completely made this up and it bears no relationship with how I use browser tabs. Many of my tabs are open for months at a time, often whole trees of dormant tasks, collapsed.
As to screen real estate, I haven't maximized my browser window since about 2005, when I moved to a wide screen. Almost all pages don't render well to a wide screen format since it's hostile to reading, and for those that do render well, typically videos and presentations, full screen is better.
> When I have about a dozen tabs opened on Chrome, all I can see is a tiny favicon.
Which is precisely when tree-style horizontal tabs are better. Because you can see the entire title of each window, their nesting, and easily scroll through the list.
Why exactly would I want to have a side bar that has rows mirroring the exact same columns on the tab bar? To band-aid this problem, all Chrome has to do is implement tab preview on mouse hover like Opera has done years ago and now Firefox.
The Tab Groups functionality (later moved to an addon) and currently not supported in FF Quantum was better than just tabs. Made things much more manageable.
'Ctrl + Shift + E' and you would get a thumbnail view of all open tabs. Worked great while it lasted.
> I don't really need an actual side bar that takes up screen space
The good thing about side bars is that they don't take up screen space. Websites usually have large amount of horizontal space left for you to use.
The good news is that it is really easy to organize yourself when you use something like Tree Style Tab. You're obviously burnt out using horizontal tab in chrome and believe the situation is hopeless. I suggest you start using Tree Style Tabs for a few days or a week and realize how amazing it is.
It is really for a reason that it is the most beloved plugin for any browsers invented.
And you may find yourself
Behind the wheel of a large Microsoft Mouse
And you may find yourself on a beautiful PC
With a beautiful Window
And you may ask yourself, well
How did I get here?
Let talk about tabs. The reason that tabs exists is because we don't want to switching between windows when we have multiple tabs open. But think about it, why are tabs any better? When I have about a dozen tabs opened on Chrome, all I can see is a tiny favicon. Any more than that I only see an (x). Firefox and Safari are a little better in that their tab bar scrolls, but still only slightly.
The reasons we open multiple tabs is primarily for cross-referencing, and secondarily "preview", i.e. the intermediary state of article quality evaluation, the state between I-dont-want-to-open-this and I-want-to-save-this-for-reading-later, and/or I-like-it-so-much-I-want-to-bookmark-this-for-eternity.
How are tabs, tab ordering, top sites, tab preview thumbnails, tree tabs and any of these incremental "improvements" on tabs going to help us do xref and eval articles?
For cross referencing, I typically open one "root" page, and then drill down to the rest. For this use case, a hierarchical arrangement of pages is probably a good idea. An MRU and/or stack on top of that is even better because maintaining a tree traversal ordering in the head all the time is hard. Too bad FF took this one feature that doesn't scramble my thinking process away years ago. I know there's control tab, but that's not good enough because that's a "cross hierarchy" mechanism. As soon as I click on a tab that belongs to different "group", MRU is messed up. I really want MRU by groups.
To address this, I need to address why I'd click on a different tab in the middle of xrefing a group of tabs. This is usually because I'm taking a break, so I press Cmd-T and introduce a new group. The problem with how tab orderings are typically done now is, what the break is over, I still have a bunch of "pages" opened waiting to be evaled, but I do want to get back to the previous grouping. How do I do that now? My tab bar is full of tabs in various different states now. To solve this problem, I can open a new window and put a new group there, but the problem is, the screen is not that large a laptop, and I frequently maximize my browser. So any extra windows are just going to be hidden in the back and I'll forget about them until a month later.
I don't really need an actual side bar that takes up screen space all the time to show me the hierarchical relationships of tabs. I mean, it's only useful if MRU doesn't do what I want.
I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like the 40 year-old GUI pattern just doesn't work for browsers anymore.