> I really can't understand how many people consistently talk about having hundreds of tabs open. What are you so afraid of closing a website for? If it's that important, you will remember to go back to it later. Usually, it's not.

Well the hacker news homepage for instance.

I typically go down and middle click on any story I find interesting, and the comments section to go with it.

This can easily end up with 8-14 tabs open.

Now repeat the same thing for my Reddit frontpage (or just /r/programming!) and I can easily hit another 30 tabs within a couple of minutes.

Every URL someone posts in the comments that seems interesting also gets opened in a new tab. An active discussion easily results in another 5-10 tabs (and remember, that is per discussion thread!).

If one of those tabs goes to Wikipedia, then I'll middle click any links in the Wikipedia article that sound relevant. This can add another 10 tabs easily.

Within 10 minutes of turning on my computer I am now easily up to 50+ tabs.

> I understand how easy that is to do. But when do you have the time to read them?

I am a very fast reader. :)

> Have you ever tried limiting yourself to one window and the judicious use of the back button?

Well yes, but then Tabs were invented!

My browsing is like a tree, pages branch off every which way. I used to have to keep track of that entire tree structure in my head, now the browser does it for me!

> My browsing is like a tree, pages branch off every which way. I used to have to keep track of that entire tree structure in my head, now the browser does it for me!

And how does it do that? Have you got some pictorial representation of the paths? Do you use a plugin? When you have opened a link in a new tab, how do you then find out where that tab originated from, or rather where you spawned it from? How do you organize them? A tab is just a cheap window isn't it?

> And how does it do that? Have you got some pictorial representation of the paths?

IE actually attempts to kinda sorta organize tabs properly. FF is odd because if you left click a tab and have Open In New Tab set, the tab is opened at the end of your tab bar. If you middle click, it is opened adjacent to your current tab.

I forget which browser attempted auto tab groups by color. Never worked out that well for me.

When I say the browser keeps the tree structure for me, I meant that I no longer have to remember how many pages back I need to go to click the next relevant link. If I am 10 pages deep into Wikipedia, remembering which originating article has another link on it I want to explore is difficult. If I just open each link I want to read in a new tab (instead of immediately following it) I can finish the current page I am on.

Really I was just suggesting trying the one tab approach as an experiment. You can't read in parallel, but I do understand the idea of backgrounding links to visit later - so you don't necessarily break the flow of the page you are currently on.

Back in the day of dial up, I'd use Opera and disable images - to make page loads quicker. I would connect the modem, go online, open as many links as possible in different tabs, and then disconnect. And read at my leisure.

It would force me to think upfront at what I wanted to look at, and in the main it was a pretty good system.

Pages back then would take a long time to load, especially with images - so background loading your next link, was a habit that you just got into.

I forget which browser has which behaviour with new tabs. Some place the tab on the end. Which makes sense in terms of using a stack. Your last link being opened being on the end. Firefox as it does tab scrolling, makes it hard to see what you have open. So I think now the default is to open the new tab next to the current tab. Which highlights another inconsistency in between application tab behaviour.

I used to have loads of tabs open of stuff, that I'd get around to reading at some point - but I'd basically never read, or it would become overwhelming - and I'd just periodically shut all the tabs and start again. Later I thought I'd bookmark anything that grabbed my attention, and go back to it later. Recent bookmarks can help there.

I don't see much difference between a bookmark and a tab, a tab though just feels a little more accessible but it's more expensive. Better bookmarking tools could make tabs easily redundant.

The 'group your tabs' feature of Firefox, just doesn't work for me, and other tab plugins haven't worked for me either. Opera has tab stacks, but I can't say I'm that fond of them either. I'd rather something a little more automated.

Anyway - way off the original topic...

I organize projects on multiple virtual desktops -- I usually have 3-5 personal software/electronic projects going at a time, and I switch between them throughout the week depending on what I feel like focusing on. Add to that 1-2 work work projects, and I'll have between 4-7 activate project desktops at any time.

I do most of my project research and documentation lookup in the browser, which means I might have anywhere from 10-30 tabs of pertinent information corresponding to each project on each virtual desktop, across multiple browser windows.

This is just convenient for me; I never have to swap in application/desktop state, because all my information, files, IDEs, etc are right there, exactly the way that I left them.

That comes out to 210 tabs at the absolute maximum; right now I seem to have around 100 Chrome tab process running. Fortunately, RAM is cheap these days.