Tab Candy: Mozilla Labs is making Firefox tabs sweet(azarask.in)
azarask.in
Tab Candy: Mozilla Labs is making Firefox tabs sweet
http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/tabcandy/
26 comments
I just realized that Aza Raskin is Jef Raskin's son. One of Jef's main locus of attention was the zooming user interface (ZUI). This centers around the fact that an interface doesn't really have to have borders at all, just the ability to zoom. Zoom in to get detail; zoom out to view more of the world. Tab Candy is Jef's ZUI brought to the web browser. Cool!
Jef's ZUI is also implemented as a file browser for Macintosh. Really awesome! http://raskinformac.com
Man, did he have anything to do with Prezi? The zooming/boarderless idea just seems so fitting. It was a great day in UI when that started catching on.
This zooming paradigm appears to be what has been superfluously part-implemented in KDE4 on the desktop in the form of activities?
I'm happy with bartab: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/67651/ and list all tabs menu:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12380/
I wrote something similar for chrome a while ago:
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/edooipcjkkbjmnog...
It's a little bit more lightweight (not in respect to memory usage maybe).
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/edooipcjkkbjmnog...
It's a little bit more lightweight (not in respect to memory usage maybe).
OTOH, there's another interesting approach to too many tabs: Don't allow them in the first place: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/kjecajkoiikaohha...
The No More Tabs extension limits the number of tabs you can have, and will close an old tab if you open a new one over that limit.
The No More Tabs extension limits the number of tabs you can have, and will close an old tab if you open a new one over that limit.
tab candy is a bit too much work.
sticking with tabgroups manager. it's a firefox addon which does the same thing but better. groups aren't hidden, they are tabs on a bar above the normal tab bar.
you can auto name group tabs after selected tabs title by double clicking it. you can switch groups in 1 click by selecting the group tab.
tab candy should go in that direction
sticking with tabgroups manager. it's a firefox addon which does the same thing but better. groups aren't hidden, they are tabs on a bar above the normal tab bar.
you can auto name group tabs after selected tabs title by double clicking it. you can switch groups in 1 click by selecting the group tab.
tab candy should go in that direction
here's tabgroups manager https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10254/
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Looks like they've re-invented the concept of "windows." Isn't there a nifty piece of software provided by the OS called a window manager that's supposed to do this sort of thing?
But unlike normal OS-level window managers - even ones with very nice features like Exposé - Tab Candy gives you a single overview of all your "windows" and the sub-windows (tabs) nested inside them. And you can interact with the "windows" and change their contents from the Tab Candy overview, which you can't do from Exposé or similar. And the naming, the simple physics for arranging spatial groups, etc., make this suitable for different use cases than ordinary windows.
Try it out and see. I've been using the internal Tab Candy alphas for a while now (I am a Mozilla employee) and it really adds some useful new possibilities.
In fact, I would love to see an operating system with a window manager that had more of Tab Candy's features. (GNOME hacker Jeff Waugh agrees: http://twitter.com/jdub/status/19052579869)
Try it out and see. I've been using the internal Tab Candy alphas for a while now (I am a Mozilla employee) and it really adds some useful new possibilities.
In fact, I would love to see an operating system with a window manager that had more of Tab Candy's features. (GNOME hacker Jeff Waugh agrees: http://twitter.com/jdub/status/19052579869)
In fact, I would love to see an operating system with a window manager that had more of Tab Candy's features. (GNOME hacker Jeff Waugh agrees: http://twitter.com/jdub/status/19052579869)
Damn. Thats so awesome to read.
Thank you.
Damn. Thats so awesome to read.
Thank you.
I would love to see that too.
They haven't exactly reinvented desktop windows, it is just that the browser is turning into a full-fledged desktop. First you just had single windows and "multi-tasking" wasn't possible, you just opened new browser for every new thing you wanted to do and had history. Then they added the tab bar which is basically a taskbar. Now they're getting into virtual desktops and using zooming for navigating hierarchies. Of course, virtual desktops are used to some degree in a lot of places (mostly Linux desktops and OSX) and zooming isn't a new idea for the desktop but it hasn't been implemented in any of the big desktop systems like this before (AFAICT).
The differences are that all applications (web pages) on this desktop are more or less the same size ("document" shaped) and we tend to have a ton more of them open at once then traditional desktop applications. And they are usually text-searchable.
I've got mixed feelings about this. I've always thought tabs were cumbersome and didn't scale well but I don't really want to have to manually sort all of my tabs and push things around with the mouse, either.
The differences are that all applications (web pages) on this desktop are more or less the same size ("document" shaped) and we tend to have a ton more of them open at once then traditional desktop applications. And they are usually text-searchable.
I've got mixed feelings about this. I've always thought tabs were cumbersome and didn't scale well but I don't really want to have to manually sort all of my tabs and push things around with the mouse, either.
Thats why I think I would still continue to use multiple windows and spaces. It's easy to stay in the mindset of work, with work related tabs and an IDE in the space. Theres no temptation to look at "unproductive work" because it doesn't exist.
Plus I'm using chrome but that's for other reasons.
Plus I'm using chrome but that's for other reasons.
They haven't exactly reinvented desktop windows, it is just that the browser is turning into a full-fledged desktop.
Lol. I just imagined Chrome OS delivering all the niceness, smashing all other OS'es.
Lol. I just imagined Chrome OS delivering all the niceness, smashing all other OS'es.
Key words: supposed to.
nix has a million different options and no clear winner. OSX and Win have static ones that can't really be customized and are only upgraded at a glacially slow pace compared to browser development.
nix has a million different options and no clear winner. OSX and Win have static ones that can't really be customized and are only upgraded at a glacially slow pace compared to browser development.
Most users don't have a usable window manager, though, so they decide to write one inside their pet application instead.
I wish you could do all this with regular windows.
Its also much more specialized for the type of stuff people do on the internet.
Its also much more specialized for the type of stuff people do on the internet.
supposed
Emphasis mine.
Emphasis mine.
That only works if your window manager actually manages your windows instead of just drawing them. StumpWM is a great example of what I'd call, doing it right. Plus it's hackable in CL so that's a plus. :-)
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This seems a little 'too much' for me. Though I wouldn't mind having a tab-candy type manager that automatically groups all tabs of the same domain into one group.
This way I could close all pages of a particular site at once and clean up the Bazillion tabs I have open in my browser right now.
This way I could close all pages of a particular site at once and clean up the Bazillion tabs I have open in my browser right now.
Browser tabs are quite a hard problem actually that many have tried to tackle - and many failed.
In my firefox days I have tried just about every tab-addon there is, from coloring (with or without aging), over multi-row, to tree-sidebar. None of them did improve the situation enough. In summary the multi-row variant helped the most, but the tab-ordering would still get messed up constantly with unrelated tabs slipping into places where they don't belong (the dreaded "spontaneous google search").
And one thing is for sure, the firefox default of scroll-arrows on the tab bar is probably the worst from all worlds. The chrome-way of squeezing it all into whatever width available beats that hands down, but still leaves a lot to be desired.
So, as someone who routinely has 30+ Tabs open in supposedly distinct groups ("Work", "Procrastination", "Research" etc.) - this looks very promising to me.
Ideally I'd want this in a slideout side-panel. And in chrome, ofcourse. ;-)
In my firefox days I have tried just about every tab-addon there is, from coloring (with or without aging), over multi-row, to tree-sidebar. None of them did improve the situation enough. In summary the multi-row variant helped the most, but the tab-ordering would still get messed up constantly with unrelated tabs slipping into places where they don't belong (the dreaded "spontaneous google search").
And one thing is for sure, the firefox default of scroll-arrows on the tab bar is probably the worst from all worlds. The chrome-way of squeezing it all into whatever width available beats that hands down, but still leaves a lot to be desired.
So, as someone who routinely has 30+ Tabs open in supposedly distinct groups ("Work", "Procrastination", "Research" etc.) - this looks very promising to me.
Ideally I'd want this in a slideout side-panel. And in chrome, ofcourse. ;-)
Typically I open a new browser window for these sort of groups (work, fun, etc). If a tab needs to move between these ad-hoc groups then with chrome you can of course just drag it between the windows. Since I have a 3 monitor setup this is a no-brainer. The tab-candy setup would be less efficient in this regard because I have to open a third state to arrange tabs. However, if I was forced to work on a laptop this might be a better option than my current setup.
I group my tabs in separate windows and let my window manager take care of managing them. Maybe this is good in some Chrome OS style netbook?
Sure, the contextual search (or whatever it was) seemed cool but elementary tasks like organizing my tabs/windows should be simple. Soon I'll have to switch my mental mode just to get my head to this fancy tab-organize mode.
Sure, the contextual search (or whatever it was) seemed cool but elementary tasks like organizing my tabs/windows should be simple. Soon I'll have to switch my mental mode just to get my head to this fancy tab-organize mode.
> Soon I'll have to switch my mental mode just to get my head to this fancy tab-organize mode.
One nice thing about Tab Candy is that it's invisible until you choose to use it. You can use tabs and windows just like you always have, and nothing will change.
Watch ten different people use web browsers, and you'll see they have very different usage styles. Tab Candy addresses some problems experienced by many but not all users, and does it without impacting the others. (You could say the same about virtual desktops in X11 or Spaces in Mac OS X.)
One nice thing about Tab Candy is that it's invisible until you choose to use it. You can use tabs and windows just like you always have, and nothing will change.
Watch ten different people use web browsers, and you'll see they have very different usage styles. Tab Candy addresses some problems experienced by many but not all users, and does it without impacting the others. (You could say the same about virtual desktops in X11 or Spaces in Mac OS X.)
If it really is independent, please keep it an extension and don't bake it into vanilla Firefox.
It doesn't just impact bewildered users that never asked for it and devs/users of existing extensions that are now sidelined -- it completely fucks your upstream development cycle, since changes to the chrome are lumped in with and gated by rendering engine changes.
It's a fundamental mistake that y'all and many others in the industry have been making for years. Microsoft stopped bundling some of their apps with Win7 for this reason, and Google has finally stopped bundling core user apps with their most recent Android release so that users have any hope of getting current versions.
It doesn't just impact bewildered users that never asked for it and devs/users of existing extensions that are now sidelined -- it completely fucks your upstream development cycle, since changes to the chrome are lumped in with and gated by rendering engine changes.
It's a fundamental mistake that y'all and many others in the industry have been making for years. Microsoft stopped bundling some of their apps with Win7 for this reason, and Google has finally stopped bundling core user apps with their most recent Android release so that users have any hope of getting current versions.
I agree with yason. I rather enjoy having segregated spaces, for work, normal, university etc. That way I'm looking at articles related to work, I have the ability to switch to an IDE and do work. The only other option is to have everything in 1 space and that's not preferable.
Great video. FF learns yet another thing from Chrome.
(In Chrome you can drag and drop tabs into distinct windows easily. It's actually easier to do this in Chrome than in Tab Candy.)
(In Chrome you can drag and drop tabs into distinct windows easily. It's actually easier to do this in Chrome than in Tab Candy.)
You can do that in vanilla Firefox 3.6 and I'm pretty sure it's worked since at least 2.x
No you can't... I just tried dragging a tab into a window. Doesn't work.
The whole point of tab candy is to fix this deficiency.
The whole point of tab candy is to fix this deficiency.
Dragging tabs between windows works for me in both Firefox 3.6 and 4.0b3pre, with a clean profile (no extensions). You have to drop the tab into the tab bar area (just like Chrome 5 - I don't know if other versions of Chrome are different).
Chrome allows you to drag a tab out of a window into a blank space to create a new window.
Yup. So does Firefox. (And Opera, for that matter... Chrome did not invent these features.)
The shipping version of Firefox when Chrome was first released absolutely did not have this feature. It was a regular pain in my ass. The ability to poof a tab out into a new window without reloading the contents was added to Firefox in the interim.
That's correct. Tear-off tabs were added to Firefox in version 3.5, which was released several months after Chrome 1.0.
It only works if you're dragging a tab into another tab area.
You can't drag a tab into window without tabs (only 1 tab hence no tab area). You also cannot drag a window (only 1 tab) into another window.
FF does have some subset of Chrome's functionality, but you cannot use it like Tab Candy to easily organize sets of tabs. Which is the whole point of the post.
You can't drag a tab into window without tabs (only 1 tab hence no tab area). You also cannot drag a window (only 1 tab) into another window.
FF does have some subset of Chrome's functionality, but you cannot use it like Tab Candy to easily organize sets of tabs. Which is the whole point of the post.
Firefox and Chrome have the exact same functionality here, unless you turn off "Always show the tab bar" in the Firefox prefs. (It is turned on by default in Firefox 3.5 and later.)
What's wrong with the Chrome method of opening new tabs right next to the current tab? This way related things tend to stay together. This one "feature" was why I switched to Chrome. This seems like an overly complicated solution in search of a problem.
My biggest problem with this approach is I lose context. I prefer tabs to open on the end of my browser. That way I can open 5 tabs, type Command-9 to to get to the last tab, and quickly deal with my tabs in a LIFO manner.
Tab Candy seems awesome to me for power browsing (20+ tabs), as long as there are intuitive keyboard shortcuts.
Tab Candy seems awesome to me for power browsing (20+ tabs), as long as there are intuitive keyboard shortcuts.
You still have problems when you open LOTS of tabs. You can no longer tell what page is loaded in a given tab.
Check Tab Mix Plus extension.
Why isn't this automatic? Maybe it's a privacy issue, but it seems to me that some sort of neural-networky thing (excuse my AI ignorance) could automatically group these. Especially with some training from the user, I bet a program could determine for 99% of cases what 'tab group' a tab should go in with broad enough categories (development, camera shopping, photo browsing, social networking, etc.).
The Tab Candy team has plans for "rules" that would work kind of like mail filters for placing new tabs into groups automatically. And these would be exposed to add-ons, if someone wants to write more complicated classification code.
Thats the point. It's alpha state. I see endless possibilities and extreme nice information organization at the horizon.
I like some of the ideas here, but I think my current browser, Conkeror (not to be confused with Konqueror), has already solved this problem. Similar to the way that Quicksilver for OS X works, I just type at it the buffer (tab) I want and it gets it for me. It would be pretty cool for it to be able figure out what the content was so I could say "camera" and it would find all the camera related stuff though...
The fisheyetabs extension has similar goals, at least for avoiding scrolling and making tabs easier to locate (no grouping though). The implementation might not be flawless, but I'd like to think that the concept is sound.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4845/ Disclaimer: I'm the author of f.e.t.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4845/ Disclaimer: I'm the author of f.e.t.
Please just add tree-style tabs feature to Firefox (and Chrome). This is a stellar way to handle tabs on modern wide monitors. It's much, much easier to scan a list than it is to scan a bunch of icons, page images, or (as today) trying to scan two-character scrunched titles across the top.
It's open source. Developers should be listening if you tell them. Also it's alpha. And at least, what about a nice, little extension? ;)
"We need a way to organize browsing, to see all of our tabs at once, and focus on the task at hand. In short, we need a way to get back control of our online lives."
Will power? Priorities?
Reducing friction or eliminating annoyances is not always a good thing, and may not accomplish what you want. Worse, it may give you undesirable side-effects.
For example, people complain about freeway traffic, how it takes too long to drive from your home at X to shopping at Y. So city planners go off and widen existing freeways, and maybe build new ones. For a while things are great; little traffic, and it's easy to get around.
Before too long, though, you find that traffic is no better than it was before. But there's lots of new housing construction in your area. Seems the promise of easy access encouraged people to keep living far out from the city. You still have bad traffic, plus more people, and worse air quality.
Had there been no attempt to reduce the friction of traffic there would likely be incentives to drive less often and fewer miles. There would be more opportunity for stores opening up closer to where you live; more locally businesses would thrive.
Likewise, maybe the annoyance of managing large numbers of tabs is a good thing. It's a reminder that maybe you're getting carried away and need to adjust your focus.
(Raise your hand if you've ever been silently relieved when a tab-heavy browser crashed and you couldn't recover them.)
Will power? Priorities?
Reducing friction or eliminating annoyances is not always a good thing, and may not accomplish what you want. Worse, it may give you undesirable side-effects.
For example, people complain about freeway traffic, how it takes too long to drive from your home at X to shopping at Y. So city planners go off and widen existing freeways, and maybe build new ones. For a while things are great; little traffic, and it's easy to get around.
Before too long, though, you find that traffic is no better than it was before. But there's lots of new housing construction in your area. Seems the promise of easy access encouraged people to keep living far out from the city. You still have bad traffic, plus more people, and worse air quality.
Had there been no attempt to reduce the friction of traffic there would likely be incentives to drive less often and fewer miles. There would be more opportunity for stores opening up closer to where you live; more locally businesses would thrive.
Likewise, maybe the annoyance of managing large numbers of tabs is a good thing. It's a reminder that maybe you're getting carried away and need to adjust your focus.
(Raise your hand if you've ever been silently relieved when a tab-heavy browser crashed and you couldn't recover them.)
Will power? Priorities?
Likewise, maybe the annoyance of managing large numbers of tabs is a good thing. It's a reminder that maybe you're getting carried away and need to adjust your focus.
What does these three(will power, priorities, focus) help you with information organization? With this thing i actually can, for example, map a plan of a learning trial and resources therefor into a priotized tree structure. Thats to nice. Any external management of that gets obsolete.
A step further this could be the exobrain on steroids. Other people are using personal wikis for such things, for example. Here you get graphs(later probably even mindmaps) with screencaps for free (while wiki users need tools for graphing into images or the like). Also, writing little conclusions on nodes you've covered aren't impossible.
Don't think about the possible problems, think about the possibilities and advantages. With your points(will power, priorities, focus) you can then easiliý archieve the latter two.
Just to admit, I've thought about something similiar for Google Chrome for a while now. My thougts just weren't gone so far, until now. But basically I was thinking and sketching in the same direction. :)
Likewise, maybe the annoyance of managing large numbers of tabs is a good thing. It's a reminder that maybe you're getting carried away and need to adjust your focus.
What does these three(will power, priorities, focus) help you with information organization? With this thing i actually can, for example, map a plan of a learning trial and resources therefor into a priotized tree structure. Thats to nice. Any external management of that gets obsolete.
A step further this could be the exobrain on steroids. Other people are using personal wikis for such things, for example. Here you get graphs(later probably even mindmaps) with screencaps for free (while wiki users need tools for graphing into images or the like). Also, writing little conclusions on nodes you've covered aren't impossible.
Don't think about the possible problems, think about the possibilities and advantages. With your points(will power, priorities, focus) you can then easiliý archieve the latter two.
Just to admit, I've thought about something similiar for Google Chrome for a while now. My thougts just weren't gone so far, until now. But basically I was thinking and sketching in the same direction. :)
Part of my point is that not everything is worth doing (or worth doing much), and making those things easier to do just makes it easier to do things not worth doing.
"What does these three(will power, priorities, focus) help you with information organization?"
Maybe the things being organized aren't the things you should be focusing on. Perhaps your focus should be elsewhere, your priorities different.
If not, then yes, better tools for organization are a win. I'm just glad there is friction to doing certain things that are often just not that important, like endless Web surfing.
"What does these three(will power, priorities, focus) help you with information organization?"
Maybe the things being organized aren't the things you should be focusing on. Perhaps your focus should be elsewhere, your priorities different.
If not, then yes, better tools for organization are a win. I'm just glad there is friction to doing certain things that are often just not that important, like endless Web surfing.
Too many tabs has never been an issue for me. Can anyone actually read more than one tab at once? If you're thinking of buying a DSLR, then focus on researching cameras. Close those tabs when you're done.
Exercise restraint, guys. Tab grouping is the classic engineer's solution to a non-problem.
Exercise restraint, guys. Tab grouping is the classic engineer's solution to a non-problem.
"Not a problem for me" is not the same thing as "not a problem."
People's browsing habits differ. Some of us do use multiple windows and tabs so we can switch our focus away from a task and return to it later. Mozilla's user studies and large-scale data mining through Test Pilot bear this out, e.g. http://surfmind.com/muzings/?p=505 - among other things, that analysis of several thousand Firefox users found that tab opening/closing behavior among the participants followed a bimodal distribution.
People's browsing habits differ. Some of us do use multiple windows and tabs so we can switch our focus away from a task and return to it later. Mozilla's user studies and large-scale data mining through Test Pilot bear this out, e.g. http://surfmind.com/muzings/?p=505 - among other things, that analysis of several thousand Firefox users found that tab opening/closing behavior among the participants followed a bimodal distribution.
counts open tabs
43.
It would be horrible to manage without any grouping mechanism and hierarchical organisation. Thanks Tab Kit.
43.
It would be horrible to manage without any grouping mechanism and hierarchical organisation. Thanks Tab Kit.
Open a new window, drag any existing tabs into that window. The solution already exists.
"Probably didn't need to read those 50 tabs of reddit anyway before my exam"
"Worse, how many of us keep tabs open as reminders of something we want to do or read later?"
Indeed I do. One of these days I'll get around to adding an extension that allows me to queue links without opening them in tabs.
Anyway, I don't understand why Tab Candy is an improvement over simple window management. Since the introduction of tabs, I've grouped tabs by purpose into separate windows, and rather assumed that's how everyone did it. Especially now that you can easily drag tabs from one browser window to another, it's effortless. No new GUI to learn, to expensive extension to install.
Indeed I do. One of these days I'll get around to adding an extension that allows me to queue links without opening them in tabs.
Anyway, I don't understand why Tab Candy is an improvement over simple window management. Since the introduction of tabs, I've grouped tabs by purpose into separate windows, and rather assumed that's how everyone did it. Especially now that you can easily drag tabs from one browser window to another, it's effortless. No new GUI to learn, to expensive extension to install.
I definitely understand the windowing you do.
I, on the other hand, despise multiple windows for firefox. It's hate learned from IE I suppose.
In my case, I use TreeStyle Tabs. The tree function is vital to working.
I think Tab Candy can combine these two concepts somewhat effectively, however, Mozilla should focus on speed, reliability, and accessibility. It's much more difficult to appease the average browser with hard facts compared to pretty videos and features, I suppose.
I think Tab Candy can combine these two concepts somewhat effectively, however, Mozilla should focus on speed, reliability, and accessibility. It's much more difficult to appease the average browser with hard facts compared to pretty videos and features, I suppose.
> Mozilla should focus on speed, reliability, and accessibility.
You'll be happy to know that our Firefox 4 Vision document contains several pages of plans for speed and stability and usability, and just one line about Tab Candy:
http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2010/05/10/firefox-4-vision-fas...
You'll be happy to know that our Firefox 4 Vision document contains several pages of plans for speed and stability and usability, and just one line about Tab Candy:
http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2010/05/10/firefox-4-vision-fas...
I think Tab Candy can combine these two concepts somewhat effectively, however, Mozilla should focus on speed, reliability, and accessibility. It's much more difficult to appease the average browser with hard facts compared to pretty videos and features, I suppose.
Thats just not what Aza Raskin is working on.. And no, I'm not one of the guys who has switched to chrome for performnace.. Damn I'am.
Thats just not what Aza Raskin is working on.. And no, I'm not one of the guys who has switched to chrome for performnace.. Damn I'am.
Uh, I massively dislike working with a fat bunch of windows. How can the title of one Firefox window as tab group can be as expressive as a group of tabs you've persisted in Tab Candy with your own label?
Indeed I do. One of these days I'll get around to adding an extension that allows me to queue links without opening them in tabs.
If you don't know any, i like Read it Later(http://readitlaterlist.com/). Anything better out there?
Indeed I do. One of these days I'll get around to adding an extension that allows me to queue links without opening them in tabs.
If you don't know any, i like Read it Later(http://readitlaterlist.com/). Anything better out there?
Instapaper (http://www.instapaper.com/) is another option.
Among other context splitting, I make regular use of virtual desktops. So there are rarely more than one or two browser windows on one desktop, and anything beyond the primary window has a short lifespan.
Read it Later looks perfect; thanks for the tip. Last I bothered to look, I couldn't find a thing.
Read it Later looks perfect; thanks for the tip. Last I bothered to look, I couldn't find a thing.
Springpad is pretty good, has mobile clients and all
Springpad makes a great dumptruck-I can throw a bunch of links in it, and than actually organize them, unlike with something like Instapaper. I can also put books, todos, etc in with the bookmarks. No, I dont work for them, just a recent convert.
I AM DROWNING IN INFOGUILT! Now I know the name. This looks great.
I persist my infoguilt in the form of starred Google Reader items. Depending on their worthiness/boringness ratio they can sit in that 'starred items' list for weeks until I finally unstar them.
Anyway, this looks very cool. I do have a slight concern that I'd want to put things in these folders other than webpages, which I suppose means that I want the facility to be 'bigger' than the browser, but it just isn't comparable to using the existing features of a window manager as a lot of people seem to be claiming. Perhaps if I want to take notes and add them to a group, I need to put those notes in the cloud.
Also, could this be the start of Mozilla Firefox OS?
Anyway, this looks very cool. I do have a slight concern that I'd want to put things in these folders other than webpages, which I suppose means that I want the facility to be 'bigger' than the browser, but it just isn't comparable to using the existing features of a window manager as a lot of people seem to be claiming. Perhaps if I want to take notes and add them to a group, I need to put those notes in the cloud.
Also, could this be the start of Mozilla Firefox OS?
I can't decide if this is a productivity tool or a distraction.
I found that I hated working with lots of windows as have many others. However, I came to realize that this is because of the window manager. I switched to a window manager capable of actually managing windows, and will never go back. The particular window manager I use is called Awesome, but there are many like it. A particularly useful feature is Awesome's use of tags. Multiple tags can be assigned to windows, and multiple windows can be assigned to tags, and at any one time, you can view whichever combination of tags you want. I have a tag for work, a tag for personal, a tag for news. I also have a tag for web, a tag for communications, and a tag for production. Viewing combinations of these tags is extremely useful and an effective way of managing windows.
Pretty cool demo. I use Vimperator[1] to do most of my browsing. The experience is quite good. It would be interesting if Tab Candy will have apis to drive these features. Then vimperator commands could call them like,
:group Work - current tab into the Work group
:switch Todo - switch to the Todo group
etc
The features look great. But after using Vimperator, I prefer keyboard alternatives to the drag-and-drop stuff shown.
[1] - http://vimperator.org
:group Work - current tab into the Work group
:switch Todo - switch to the Todo group
etc
The features look great. But after using Vimperator, I prefer keyboard alternatives to the drag-and-drop stuff shown.
[1] - http://vimperator.org
The tab grouping feature seems like it would be useful for me. It would be nice if the groups/pages were saved as folders/bookmarks so it could be retrieved later. They never mentioned what happens when FF was closed. And also if they could display the bookmarks/folders in the same fashion.
I am NOT interested in them looking into what pages I go to or my searches so they can direct ads or price search results. Data sharing should only be to people I know AND approve in advance.
I am NOT interested in them looking into what pages I go to or my searches so they can direct ads or price search results. Data sharing should only be to people I know AND approve in advance.
This whole effort is misguided. I can't fathom wanting to name a group of tabs. As it is I barely ever take the initiative to organize bookmarks, and those are permanent.
People don't need a filing cabinet for something that should be ephemeral and self-limiting. When your desk gets buried under a skin of receipts, junk mail envelopes, and water-ringed Economists from last May, the only proper organizational tool is a trash can. Tabs are just a modern incarnation of the same problem.
People don't need a filing cabinet for something that should be ephemeral and self-limiting. When your desk gets buried under a skin of receipts, junk mail envelopes, and water-ringed Economists from last May, the only proper organizational tool is a trash can. Tabs are just a modern incarnation of the same problem.
Sure, but the trashcan is the "proper organizational tool" only because a better solution doesn't exist yet, not because it solves the problem optimally. Isn't there some reason that copy of the Economist is sitting on your desk in the first place? Presumably you do want to read the interesting articles in it, and it'd be handy if the most interesting ones were somehow brought to you.
Now, Tab Candy doesn't do that, but I think it's at least a step in the right direction of trying to address the cases that are somewhere between "garbage collect the tab" and "immediately use the tab".
Now, Tab Candy doesn't do that, but I think it's at least a step in the right direction of trying to address the cases that are somewhere between "garbage collect the tab" and "immediately use the tab".
The better solution is search, which is notably not an organizational tool at all as far as the user is concerned. Will there some day be a solution that's better still? Yes. But I guarantee it won't involve the user sorting into buckets or affixing labels.
Presumably, a system like this would ultimately replace bookmarks and eliminate the distinction between an open page and a saved one. Naturally, background pages would have to be swapped out of memory in some intelligent way, which Aza did mention.
Personally, I'd say this thing fits my browsing habits perfectly. It's been obvious to me that things would go in this direction since I started using Tree Style Tabs.
Personally, I'd say this thing fits my browsing habits perfectly. It's been obvious to me that things would go in this direction since I started using Tree Style Tabs.
I don't have a bunch of tabs I want to throw away - I have a load of them that I'm using, for different purposes.
Being able to separate them out from each other would be fantastic. Naming them is less necessary.
Being able to separate them out from each other would be fantastic. Naming them is less necessary.
Tab Kit is a plugin worth looking at.
I would love to have something like tab candy in Chrome. As it is, I have between 8 and 12 Chrome windows open in different workspaces, each containing a certain group of tabs. For example, I typically read HN in my "recreational-web-browsing" window. It has my email, my RSS, twitter/identi.ca, HN, etc. In another window, I have the set of webcomics I want to start reading or am in the process of catching up to(so that I start subscribing by RSS instead). In four windows, I have all the web-pages I've been reading for various projects I'm working on. In another are my online placement tests for my university. With something like tab candy, I would end up consolidating the webcomics and possibly the placement tests into groups of tabs within the recreational browsing window. I might consolidate some of the project windows together(although the Emacs and terminal windows I keep open associated with the projects might deter me from doing this much.
Concerning not organizing permanent bookmarks, tabs can be as permanent as you want them to be in any browser with a "save tabs on exit" or similar option. But they're also much easier to organize. Just move windows and tabs about. Of course, they do take up memory, but if I had something like tab candy with an option to individually mark tabs as not needing to be kept loaded, that would almost certainly totally replace my use of bookmarks.
Concerning not organizing permanent bookmarks, tabs can be as permanent as you want them to be in any browser with a "save tabs on exit" or similar option. But they're also much easier to organize. Just move windows and tabs about. Of course, they do take up memory, but if I had something like tab candy with an option to individually mark tabs as not needing to be kept loaded, that would almost certainly totally replace my use of bookmarks.
I don't do this, but I know many medium-experience users who keep literally 100s of tabs open at a time. It's like they use it instead of bookmarks. That sort of person would love this.
I keep 100s of tabs open, but it's not because I specifically want tabs, it's because it's the laziest solution.
To me Tab Candy is the extra work that made me avoid bookmarks.
To me Tab Candy is the extra work that made me avoid bookmarks.
how about software that can take your history and automatically make a mindmap? does this exist?
Passing the word along: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890/
Tree style tabs! Organize your tabs into a tree! I've been using the addon for a while (previously used the multi-row feature of tab mix plus), and it is awesome. They should standardize on this instead of more useless eye candy.
Tree style tabs! Organize your tabs into a tree! I've been using the addon for a while (previously used the multi-row feature of tab mix plus), and it is awesome. They should standardize on this instead of more useless eye candy.