Programming My Life

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.

In the same way that it would be hard for me to imagine life without a cell phone, I can’t imagine going back to browsers without tabs.  Tabs allow me to organize my browsing more efficiently.  In fact, I currently have 17 tabs open in just this browser (12 in my other browser).  However, since being introduced to Firefox a few years ago (and Chrome more recently), I have not seen tabs change in a way to allow for more efficient sharing of information or to allow for more control over my browser’s state.

Specifically, I would like to see a browser allow the user to group tabs for two specific purposes.  First, when I am taking a break at work and decide to look at a few sites, or even if I am waiting for something at the end of the day and find a few stories just before leaving, I just copy and paste the URLs and email the to myself.  It would be significantly more efficient if I could group those tabs and have the browser take care of the URLs for me in a small file I could email myself.

Second, if a colleague wants me to provide some background on a subject (or vice versa), I typically do exactly what I do for myself: open several tabs, then copy and paste the URLs into an email or IM.  It would be nice if I could send a file that opened the URLs in his browser so that he could see all of the links rather than opening them individually.

It would also be great if I could break a set of tabs into a named group.  Currently, I have 4 Chrome windows open because I want to separate articles into specific groups so that I’m not jumping from one focus to another between articles.  I am realizing in my ‘computing articles’ window that it is quickly being divided into articles about computing technology and articles that instruct me on something I want to do (overclock my GPU, make a hackintosh, etc.).  So now I’m looking at potentially more windows.  It would be great if I could save all of these tabs into one file that would open them all.

Some may quip that bookmarks serve the purposes I am asking for, but beyond these smaller quibbles that can be solved with some copying and pasting lies a much larger issue I have with the current state of tabbed browsing: saving the state of my tabs is handled autonomously leaving me to guess at the saved state of my tabs.

Chrome’s greatest advantage (tabs as there own processes) is its greatest weakness here.  In order to restart the browser and get all of my tabs back, I need to ensure that all of my tabs are in one window and that I shut down that window.  The same goes for Firefox.

This week while troubleshooting an unrelated problem, my network admin closed my Firefox window and opened a new one,  leaving my previous save state (and all 732 tabs I had open) to vanish into the ether.  By allowing me to save and store tabs, I would never have to worry about him or anyone else (including myself) doing this.

Productivity software (Word, Excel, etc), games, even podcasts in iTunes all offer both manual and automatic save states.  Why can’t browsers?