Here’s a confession: I’m a tab junkie. Not Tab, the diet cola soft drink sold by Coca-Cola, but Web browser tabs.
Without even thinking about it, there can be 30 to 50 tabs open within Firefox, which probably explains why Apple’s ball of death appears on a regular basis. The problem is there’s just too many interesting things to use and read.
So, what’s the solution for having an addiction to too many tabs? Well, you simply use a second browser (aka the secondary browser, according to my friend, Kevin Restivo). The second browser provides access to the services used on a regular basis: GMail, Facebook, Google Reader, Twitter, YouTube, Techmeme, Hacker News, et al).
For the second browser, I’m using Google Chrome. It’s a quick, no-frills browser that serves as nice companion to Firefox, which has all the bells and whistles (and add-ons) required.
Using two browsers probably isn’t the best or most processor-friendly solution but it helps manage my tab addiction. (Note: Hat tip to Cheryl Smith for the tab tweak.)
5 Comments
Totally with you.
1) a squijillion tabs open at once
2) usually Chrome and Firefox
3) Tweetdeck takes care of what would have been a minimum of three open tabs
One of the advantages of Chrome is that I can close a window with 17 tabs, and reopen it later, with all 17 tabs intact.
I do this as well.
I use chrome for all my permanently open tabs like google reader and gmail, and I use firefox for all my other browsing.
One thing that I find really useful when having lost of tabs open is to italicize the titles of the non-read tabs. Here's a link to the lifehacker post on how to do it without an extension:
http://lifehacker.com/5190596/italicize-your-unre...
There is nothing stopping you from opening up a couple FF windows (File->New Window). That is the way I normally work with a million tabs open in each one. Sometimes have 3 windows open spread across a number of monitors.
What I would not live without is Session Manager addon. That way I can save a number of different setups that I can open up at any given time with a single click.
Tim,
You're right, that's definitely another way of managing more tabs!
My name is Amanda, and I am also a tab addict. I can have anywhere from 10-30 or more tabs open at a given time. My first task when I arrive at my desk in the morning is to scan Google Reader and Twitter for interesting articles and posts I might want to read. I then open a second browser window to go about any web business I might during my day. Throughout the course of the day I skim each article/tab in my first browser, read the ones that are most interesting, and close the tab once I've saved it to delicious or tweeted it. This is a good system that works for me.