"Activities" or another way to organize & group tabs
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woodtechie last edited by
Wasn't sure how to check to see if this was suggested. "Tab stacking" was the closest thing I could find (and might work almost as well).
I like to leave a number of tabs open for long periods (weeks sometimes) for stuff that I started on but want to come back to later without having to relocate 4 or 5 sites. Yes I could bookmark all those sites, but I don't want them long term so that's counterproductive... I'd just have to find and delete the bookmarks later.
I'd like a way to switch between and create new "Activities" which basically just show the set of tabs associated with that activity. For performance reasons in between browser startups we'd only want to actually load/refresh the tabs for the current activity.
Right now I have SIX "groups" of tabs (total 15 or 20) open for six different activities I'm working on over a long term. Grouping into activities like this would help with startup time when restarting the browser (I have it set to remember open tabs) and would reduce the clutter from all the tabs I'm not working with at the moment.
If there is anything like this already or someone has a better idea I'd be interested too.
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lando242 last edited by
Tab stacking isn't currently in Opera. There may be an extension that adds this feature but I don't know of one off the top of my head. Have you tried pinning tabs though? Pinning a tab moves it to the far left of the tab bad and makes in smaller so it takes up less space. It also makes it so you can't close it by accident without unpinning it first. very handy for hanging on to tabs for a longer time.
Another option would be something like Session Buddy. It allows you to save sessions and edit them. You can easily open tabs, windows or entire groupings of windows with just a few clicks and she shows things like the websites icon and its title so they are easy to keep track of.
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woodtechie last edited by
I'll try pinning for now, but I think we could probably improve on that (seems like a lot of clicking).
I'm just hoping they'll consider adding this (or tab stacking/grouping) as a base-feature in a later version. I've always considered Opera the primary browser innovator, hell didn't Crapfox and Chrome copy the whole concept of tabs way after Opera did it?
Just like tabs cleaned up the OS taskbar (remember the pre-tab days?), this "activity" grouping concept seems like a logical progression for organizing large numbers of tabs. Bonus points if the 'activities' can be given custom names. The thing I'm not sure about at this point is what the 'activity' switching UI would look like ideally - it needs to be very fast and trivial to use.
I also wonder how many other people do the same thing I do. Does anyone else leave up bunches of old tabs just because you mean to go back to them later?
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lando242 last edited by
Based on Opera's usage surveys very few people used tab stacking in the old versions, which is why you've not seen them return so far.
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lem729 last edited by
Tab Bundler in the Chrome Store is pretty good. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-bundler/ooajenhhhbdbcolenhmmkgmkcocfdahd
It's not tab stacking, but is a way to organize the tabs that is still there when you reopen the browser.
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woodtechie last edited by
I can believe that tab stacking might not be very popular, if you have to "stack/group" tabs manually all the time, but what I'm suggesting would work a little different. The "stacking" would happen automatically depending on the current activity you have selected, and all your tabs (for the current activity) would remain fully visible (no "stack"). The most obvious way to switch between activities would be to have an optionally visible "Activity Toolbar" below the tabs with a little + button to create a new activity. Selecting an activity would show all the tabs linked to that activity, and deleting an activity would close all those tabs with a confirm dialog.
Tab Bundler looks like it might be pretty close (their demo video is a joke, doesn't show how it works at all), although what I had in mind was a toolbar or something always visible and easier to access.
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woodtechie last edited by
Yeah I think we could do better than Tab Bundler. A lot of stuff I just don't care about - sharing, archiving, login, annoying "updates"... some confusing settings and nowhere near intuitive enough (the hint is that it has a "tips" feature!). Lots of "stuff" I couldn't care less about. I'll try it out though.
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lem729 last edited by
I have tab bundler, and I'm not doing any sharing, archiving, or logins with it. There's no required registration to another website. It puts on the icon bar, your bundler icon, and everything bundled is displayed in it, and survives closing the browser, and opening it another time. Now it does have the ability to archive or share bundles. (Since I don't use those features, I'm not sure if they require logins). The login feature, I believe, is essentially for synchronization across multiple machines (which could be useful if you need to do that) (I don't). I got the extension before it had that feature, or the archiving, sharing feature. The archiving feature could, I think, be useful (saving multiple alternative bundles. like tab bundler because I can bundle on the icon bar certain quick access sites, and it's easier to get to them than through the speed dial (you often have to close the tab you're on to get to it, or open a new tab), or the bookmarks bar, which is slower to display, and, for sure, often harder to reach with the mouse.
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woodtechie last edited by
I'm just being lazy - issue is, it doesn't seem intuitive enough to "just use it". I created bundles for each group of tabs I'd want, but can't really figure out what to do from there. Not sure it's worth the effort for something I think should be simple. I'll probably play with it to see how it works some day. Maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy.
