I never understood how folks end up with 20+ (100+ !?) tabs just hanging around ALL the time. For me it's so much visual noise.
I can see it happening when you're in the midst of research or troubleshooting. But when I'm done or have solved my issue I'll note in my PR where i found solutions or add the useful pages to my bookmark service (raindrop). Then close all the tabs!
I never understood how folks end up with 20+ (100+ !?) tabs just hanging around ALL the time.
I get there sometimes, but never in the same window.
I maintain multiple web sites, so each site has its own desktop. Plus there's another desktop for one-off tasks, and one for communicating (e-mail, etc...).
Within each desktop is a browser window, which may have five or six tabs. If I'm doing testing, that number balloons. But only while testing.
So between all the sites and tabs, I may have 50 or 60 tabs. But since they are kept in different browser windows on different desktops, they're manageable.
All of these windows relate to different things. For example whenever I check HN I fire up a new window. I might not have 2 hours of time to read/research everything interesting I happen to find so I just leave that window open for later.
Whenever troubleshooting I do the same as you, a window can get up to 20 or something tabs, but once the problem is solved those get closed. Or if there are interesting tabs in there that warrant future research, they get grouped in a new window.
On Mac I Cmd+tab through apps and Option+tab through windows of a specific app (don't remember what the default combo is). Or I swipe three fingers down to see all app windows. And I also use Tab Switcher[0], which allows me to Cmd+Shift+K to fuzzy search all open tabs.
This setup is not optimal, but it's not that messy/problematic for me.
I'm one of those "tab-addicts". The problem is that I use Tabs for everything: reading list, history, bookmarks.
Right now I have 8 pinned tabs for email, calendar, messengers and such things. Then I have a couple of interesting news articles etc. that I left open to read later. I also left open some of my work/research flows (so 3-5 tabs each that belong to the same project topic) that I didn't really finish or was just to lazy to close.
I can see it happening when you're in the midst of research or troubleshooting. But when I'm done or have solved my issue I'll note in my PR where i found solutions or add the useful pages to my bookmark service (raindrop). Then close all the tabs!