Browser Tab Innovation?
Notsomuch, actually. Since my post on browser tab stagnation, not much has changed in terms of offerings from the major browsers. However, I have found two services that have addressed some of the issues I raised: Google Bookmarks and fur.ly.
Google Bookmarks
In my post on browser tab stagnation, I claimed that bookmarking simply wouldn’t solve many of the problems I have with the state of tabbed browsing. I still feel that way, but Google Bookmarks has helped with at least one of the problems I’ve had with browsers recently; instead of the named groups of tabs I was looking for, Google Bookmarks’ tag feature allows me to see related sites. Being able to tag bookmarks and keep them consistent in the cloud (rather than having to update them on separate machines) has helped me immensely. First, if I find a work related link at home, or a link I think would be interesting for a personal project at work, I am able to put them in the same place, with the same amount of effort as traditional bookmarking, regardless of my location. Second, instead of having to create folders and worry about organizing bookmarks, I can simply tag the bookmarks and search by tag later. Moreover, I don’t even have to enter the entire tag if I’ve already created it as Google bookmarks uses autocomplete.
Before I started using Google bookmarks, I would generally just bookmark a site and put off organizing them until later (I still haven’t done that since January). Now organizing is a simple matter of typing the tag. The tags are especially helpful because they allow me to see what references I have for a specific topic. The ability to search and the reduction in the amount of work cause me to bookmark more sites for reference. As an example, I am interested in programming for my phone, so I have been reading up on Android programming. The problem is, between work and other obligations, I haven’t been able to look into it for the past few weeks. Bookmark tags allow me to search for anything I’ve added about Android and either remember where I was in the process, or dive in from a different direction.
To use Google Bookmarks, I have added the Bookmarklet from here to each of my browsers.
fur.ly
fur.ly is a URL shortening service that accepts multiple URLs and provides a shortened link. Upon opening the link provided by fur.ly, the user sees the first page from the list of URLs topped by a small header with links to 1) get rid of the header 2) move to the next link 3) see statistics about the fur.ly link as well as a dropdown menu of all the pages supplied with the original link. This is a unique service that allows for a bit more focused browsing on a particular subject. While I would prefer a browser feature that allowed me to save and load multiple tabs, this service at least allows me to share multiple links in a focused way.
Conclusion
Sadly, fur.ly still requires about the same amount of effort as my usual method of simply copying and pasting the links into an email (to myself or a friend/colleague). Hopefully newer versions of browsers will address this natively. Also, while Google Bookmarks has been great, it would be great if I could simply name a tag and click a few tabs that could be labeled and saved with that tag rather than having to click and bookmark each tab and add the same tag repeatedly. Finally, I would still like the ability to control the state of my tabs in addition to having it automated. I have learned to work around this problem, but I would prefer to be able to have it addressed by the browsers so I don’t have to worry about losing tabs/windows when I close my browser.
