Tabs! Tabs! Everywhere!

[paraka]

I kind of stopped reading my LJ about halfway through the month of December. I've gone back as far as my flist will let me and am making my way forward. So if you get a comment from me for a post from 2 weeks ago, that's why.

Since I'm catching up, I only just saw this post by seperis on how many tabs people generally have open at a time. I was kind of surprised to see "Why In the Name of God: 51 - 99" and "Screenshots or It Didn't Happen: 100+ " because for me, 51-99 means "Yay! I've gotten rid of a ton of tabs!" My average amount of tabs is somewhere around 120-180 tabs open (generally between 2, sometimes 3 windows). It always takes me like 2 minutes to scroll through all the tabs I have open.

...Is that not normal? Because I totally thought it was. Hell, even at work, where I try my best to not have very many tabs open, I have 35 open. So, I'd like to do my own poll to see how my flist does:

[Poll #1322798]

It's funny, when I first got into fandom (when I was still using IE) I never used to have more than, oh, say 5 windows open (although, I think it was more like 2). I used to make fun of raxhel for having 20 windows open all the time. Then when we moved to China, we were sharing an internet connection between the two of us, so I'd go on stints and open a ton of windows so I'd always have fic available. I was still using IE at the time, and would get like 50 window open. I *hated* Windows automatic updates, because they'd shut my computer down while I was sleeping (I turn my computer off maybe a dozen times a year the rest of the time it just goes into hibernation) and I'd lose all my windows. Then I found Firefox.

I think before too, I wasn't getting as much fic off of LJ, I'd just go searching for fic off archives, rec lists or yes, sometimes LJ whenever I wanted to read. I'd only ever pull up one fic at a time. Now though, there's so much fic on my flist that I am constantly opening new tabs. There's more fic than I could ever possibly read out there. In fact, I started a spreadsheet with links to all the fics I found interesting enough to read. And that's not even mentioning all the meta and rec lists and vidding links I pull up as well. I can't imagine going back to just having a few windows open at a time.

Of course, all this does explain why Firefox alone uses around 400MBs of my memory on a good day.

Comments

[equusentric.livejournal.com]

I clean up and restart my computer too often to have a zillion tabs open. I just bookmark the hell out of things.

[scatterheart.livejournal.com]

There are some tabs that I always have open - my primary e-mail, Twitter and LJ - and then a few with things I need to/meant to read or want to remember to post about. But once I realize that I won't get around to reading something anytime soon, it goes into the "to do" part of my bookmarks. I would go CRAZY with more than 10-15 tabs.

(Although there are more sometimes while I'm "actively surfing", for example when I'm checking my flist, reading another community and having someone send me links via IM at the same time.)

[aurora]

Oh man, I get twitchy when I have more than 10 tabs for longer than a few hours. (And that's WITH Firefox' Faviconize add-on.) When I read my flist, I do tend to open up 50+ because I scroll down/up my friends page and open every entry I want to read/comment on in a separate tab.

I do often open a new window when I'm reading my message center, because I open every relevant message in a new tab too.

As for fic: I really haven't read all that much these last few months, and save all the things I want to read on a 'to do' textfile on my desktop.

Oh, and about reading your flist when you've been gone for a while: don't know if you saw this, but LJ introduced the View Friends Page by Date feature. It's pretty handy.

[paradise-city.livejournal.com]

Wow. I don't know how you do that -- it would make me crazy.

I generally have three windows open: Outlook, Firefox, and iTunes. (In that order, too. Taskbar Commander is one of my favorite little programs for reorganizing the windows in your taskbar.) If I'm working on something for school, then I'll have those windows open, but I never go more than one row. If that happens, I start closing windows.

As far as browsing goes, I almost always only have one window with no more than two rows of tabs. Even two rows makes me twitchy -- one row is best. If I'm reading my flist or message boards, I only open tabs when I know I have time to read/answer and then close them as I go to get back to one row.

I've been using the Taboo extension for Firefox to bookmark stuff I'd like to read later. I like to keep the bookmarks on my computer organized and at a minimum, so Taboo is great for all the random stuff I don't have time to read. Problem is, I never actually get around to reading them. I've come to realize that if it's not important/interesting enough for me to read when I open the tab, it's generally not important/interesting enough for me to read at all. Less is totally more for me.

[maekala.livejournal.com]

I remember the first time you mentioned how many tabs you keep open, I scoffed a bit and thought you were crazy.

Now that AOL has the AOL desktop where I can actually open stuff up in tabbed browsing (I really should use IE, but I grew up on AOL and I'm slow to change), I've gone a bit crazy myself.

I'll open tabs for fic, icons, vids, interesting stuff from my flist and whatever. Plus, I do still sometimes have to have an IE window open with stuff either because LJ is not cooperating with AOL at work (it does that sometimes) or because I'm looking at a vid on Veoh, which does not like AOL. Other than that, I also have a Windows Explorer window open, some kind of media player (two if I'm watching an ep), plus a Word doc and sometimes an Excel.

I have to admit, I so badly miss my double monitors from when I was working in IR. They were both huge 19" monitors and the computer was fast, plus access to the T drive meant I could have whatever opened. The only reason I don't have more open now is because Windows Updater still restarts my computer every other week (I know how to stop it, I just don't) and, as much as I hibernate my computer to move between home and work, it slows way down after awhile.

[anoel.livejournal.com]

I can't stand having too many tabs open, my limit is usually the number I can put and still read the top subject line. Cause I usually forget about them or again it all gets too messy and I close them all down. Read it later helps me a lot, I just save everything to that and get to them when I get to them.

[edgyauthor.livejournal.com]

I have dial-up, so I usually don't have more than 15 taps open at once, otherwise my computer slows down way too much. I'm afraid of how many tabs I *would* have open if I did have more freedom. *face-palm*