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[–]JasonCarswell[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Here's the problem with too many tabs: memory limits. I have thousands of tabs, MOST are unloaded, sitting there idle. Their order and hierarchy needs to be stable. If there's a glitch I need to restore the session. I cannot afford to lose my organized system. I would do this with bookmarks if it gave me the same results. Neither are stable enough.

Accidental glitches are only acceptable if they can be reliably corrected. Automatic actions will be learned by the human who will adapt.

Currently a typical hierarchical tab will have a +- or arrow to collapse plus a X to close. One (maybe 2) more icon(s), OR, better icons with more functionality could easily be developed and employed. IMO, there's not enough clever and ergonomic GUI around.

I liked FireFox 56 the best of all. I've been primarily using PaleMoon and WaterFox for several months. PaleMoon was a huge timesuck in Nov-Dec as I fine tuned the fuck out of it to ultimately decide it can't do what I need. This year WaterFox was meh/okay, but got terrrrrrribly slow over 2000 tabs. In a backpain fog it was killing me, crawling around with 5000 tabs. Finally out of that fog, I finally added a now-obvious addon to bookmark-and-close-tabs, so I'm down to less than 3000.

I'm tempted to go back to Vivaldi and relearn it. I cannot support the corrupted FF. Ultimately I don't want to waste more time, and I'd need to switch to Mint before taking on big learning projects.

Yep. Getting new SSDs for my 2 boxes has been near the top of my list for years, but stuff keeps happening. Over the last few months I've realized I need to make the content to make the income to make the changeover. I had been waiting to save the funds to make the changeover to start fresh with all FLOSS and start the content to make the income. Active vs passive.

I am very concerned about screwing up stuff on Linux when I will ultimately try to customize my functionality and ergonomics of my work environment. Having a backup would be ideal if I can afford it.

Unfortunately my old box doesn't do USB (thumbdrive) boots. I have 3x 3tb drives I mean to RAID in it to be a new PeerTube indie-server, with d3rr's help. I have a perfect domain name too I'll buy May 1st. If curious I can share the name in PM. I have dozens of drives of digital hoarding I'd like to RAID and to add via LAN somehow. I'd also like to set up mediawiki and/or image bank and/or IPFS and/or torrent systems to share the shit I've got. None of this is an immediate top priority. My hoarding is an ongoing OCD project. When I share it, it will cease to be hoarding and be an archive. Without some seriously powerful, simple tools for organizing, monitoring, and administration I won't ever be opening up my archive to external submissions beyond trusted good folks like you and d3rr because I have better things to do than filter anon folks. At best I'll set up auto-mirroring redistribution to help decentralize. I'm not aiming to be a hub of activity. I just want info available, especially critical info, not lost to the memory hole of time.

I'd like to see "smart" federated content management arise. Popular content should be co-hosted by many to redistribute the bandwidth loads. If/as popularity wanes not everyone will need to retain it. It should obviously be retained by those who wish to, as well as some by those who just support decentralized archives, otherwise a team could game the system to collect, dominate, and squash. Rare content should also be co-hosted to make it more available and avoid extinction. Balancing between all these is important. Further, sharing the rewards (ie. Filecoin) of popular as well as rare content in a balanced hive-mind is necessary. Diverse options are key too: IPFS, torrents, sharding, etc.

IMO, among many, concepts like this previous paragraph, need to be cleaned up and presentable in manifestos (for lack of a better name (I came up with "Libre-Festos" in my Phoenix Forum post)). These manifestos could have basic, advanced, and expert outlines to be shared on a site like WikiSpooks. I have much more on this manifesto project, yet to be shared, including stuff like technology, resistance ideas, economics, alternative, solutions, liberty ideas, creating solid definitions of things to stop a lot of the confusing divisive language, etc. Obviously many overlap. Robin and I have been discussing ideas to evolve WikiSpooks for years.

Yes, my neighbour got the 50" 4K Smart TV I got before Xmas because my video card can do 4x1080p but not 1x4K and he gave me his old 38" 1080p which is a much better fit for my small place. I spent more than I should have for many new adapters and splitters often from China over the last couple months only to determine I can't have one small monitor mirrored on the bigger screen. After I create my original content to become a zillionaire I'll revisit and reconsider this dilemma.

[–]LarrySwinger2 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Okay, so there's a couple of routes you can take regarding the browser:

  • A resource efficient setup, so you can keep 5000+ tabs open without your system slowing to a crawl (category A)
  • Bookmarking tab trees such that the structure is stored (category B)
  • Utilizing sessions such that the tree structure is stored (category C)

Category A

I wonder if Pale Moon can handle 5000+ open tabs. I've never tried it in that browser, but if memory serves me right, the old Firefox was actually less resource efficient than the newer ones. And you seem to have rejected this option anyway. It could still be worth a try, you never know how it turns out in practice. I know of a lot of addons for Pale Moon, which you can get through the Classic Add-ons Archive, which archives almost 20,000 add-ons. If you want to, you tell me what you're missing in PM and I'll see if I know of any add-ons that serve that purpose. (If a lack of features was the problem of course.) Especially "Tabs Tree" is a well-programmed add-on, much more lightweight than the add-ons available for the modern Firefox.

Another lightweight browser that supports tab trees is Falkon. I haven't used it too much, but based on the little experience I've had with it, I'd recommend it. Only if your needs are simple, though. It doesn't have many add-ons, but it does have the essential ones such as an ad blocker and a script blocker.

A few resource efficient add-ons for the modern Firefox are Vertical Tree Tabs, Power Tabs, and Tab Sidebar. Only the former supports a tree proper, while the latter two provide vertical tabs with grouping functionality (effectively a tree with a depth of only one level, with the possibility to collapse / expand those groups). Power Tabs lets you make folders in which the tabs are grouped, while Tab Sidebar automatically groups the tabs that are opened from middle clicks. This works well with Simple Tab Groups if you want to better organize your tabs. This is my current setup.

Category B

The solutions I mentioned above are recommended. The problem with the following add-ons is that they make the browser slow, are buggy, or both.

There are two add-ons in category B: Tree Style Tab and Tree Tabs (not to be confused with the obscure Tabs Tree I mentioned above). TST is the best for this, because it preserves the tree structure. Tree Tabs will create a folder with one bookmark for all tabs in the sub-tree, but when you open it, it will just be a flat list. I've experienced bugs with TST, but not many and nothing that can't be fixed. The problem is that it makes your browser slow. Tree Tabs also makes your browser slow, but not as quickly as TST. It does have a bug where all your groups get merged into a single one, and I believe your tree structure also gets lost when this happens. YMMV, maybe it won't happen to you.

Category C

You can't just use any session manager with a tree tabs add-on, because it won't preserve the structure. The add-on should have a built-in session manager.

Tree Tabs falls in this category as well, as does Sidebery. The latter can also store your session automatically. And it doesn't make your browser slow! I would recommend it if it weren't for this fatal flaw: it also has a bug where your groups get merged into a single one, and IIRC the structure gets lost. Yep, just like with Tree Tabs. Again, maybe it's something about my setup that causes this and you won't experience it. Or maybe it's been fixed by now – I haven't used either of these add-ons in almost a year.

Overview

I'll just summarize the above quickly to give a better comparison.

Well programmed solutions but with fewer features

  • Tabs Tree (PM / WF)
  • Falkon
  • Vertical Tree Tabs (FF / WF) (Can be combined with Simple Tab Groups)
  • Power Tabs (FF / WF) (Can be combined with Simple Tab Groups)
  • Tab Sidebar (FF / WF) (Can be combined with Simple Tab Groups)

Solutions with more features but which are heavy / buggy

  • TST (Can bookmark trees and be combined with Simple Tab Groups)
  • Tree Tabs (Can bookmark trees, and has groups and a session manager built in)
  • Sidebery (Lightweight but buggy; has groups and a session manager built in)

Further mentions

Finally, there's an add-on called OneTab, which will aggregate all your open tabs into an overview page, and then close them. You can do a little tab management in this overview page. Namely you can organize them into editable groups. Handy, but it won't save your tree structure.

Let me know if this helps.

[–]LarrySwinger2 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Unfortunately my old box doesn't do USB (thumbdrive) boots. I have 3x 3tb drives I mean to RAID in it to be a new PeerTube indie-server, with d3rr's help. I have a perfect domain name too I'll buy May 1st. If curious I can share the name in PM.

Yes, do tell me, by the way.