I have a tab problem.
Oct. 8th, 2009 11:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tentoumushiBack when Internet Explorer was my primary browser, I would open new window after new window until my computer was groaning under the strain. I could get maybe ten open before the slowdown became unbearable. And eventually I'd have to restart and lose them all, and sanity would return to the land of Windows.
I tried Opera and fell in love with tabs and mouse gestures, but I couldn't make the switch. I think it was that in Windows Me the IME wouldn't work with non-Microsoft programs, and I didn't want to open a different browser every time I needed to type in Japanese.
Then I moved up to Windows XP and Firefox. And from day one I've had a tab problem. There's an email tab and an LJ tab and a Google Reader tab, a fic I want to read, something cool I want to post about or share with someone, something I want to buy, a new site or software I want to try out, and on and on and on. At the end of the day I haven't dealt with all those things, so the next day I'll restore my session--I can't live without Tab Mix Plus--but instead of going through my backlog, I open a whole bunch of new tabs. So each day my tabs increase in number. When I get up around 100 I'll start pruning. By then I'll have lost interest in some of the old tabs, but I never get much below 100 tabs. Eventually something will happen and I won't be able to restore the session* and then the whole process starts over again.
I really want to find a way of better dealing with my tabs so they don't sit open for days, weeks, months at a time. One category of tabs is the stuff I want to read later. I have recently solved this problem with a wonderful little add-on called Read It Later. It's simple and easy and I love it.
There's another extension I use that's called Too Many Tabs. (Yes, really.) It's very similar in function to Read It Later, basically temporary bookmarks that are easy to add and remove. The difference is that where Read It Later is an icon with a simple drop down menu of items arranged in chronological order, Too Many Tabs is a whole bar that mimics a row of regular tabs with a drop down menu that allows you to change rows. You can rename the rows and they basically function like folders. It's useful in that it gets some of those tabs out of the way, and I don't have to keep reloading them every time I start Firefox. But it's a temporary solution. I have a row of fics to read from before I started using Read It Later, and that's fine. Likewise with my row of things to download. Or maybe I open a bunch of tabs to compare products or services and I want to save them until I make a decision. The problem is that I have too many tabs that need to be stored more permanently, and in such a way that I can easily find them again.
The obvious choice would be Delicious. But, see, I fucking hate Delicious. I hate the Firefox extension. The old del.icio.us one was fine, and I used to use Nightly Tester Tools to force it to work, but eventually I had to switch to the updated one. I ended up having to disable it because it stopped letting me add to my Firefox bookmarks. I've avoided enabling it again because I hate the way it tries to sync your bookmarks. I know you can turn off the sync, but the way I remember it automatically started syncing while I fumbled around in the menu trying to figure out how to stop it. It may well be that I remember it being worse that it is. It may even be that since I only disabled rather than uninstalled it, that my options have been saved. I don't know. But it isn't just that add-on that I hate.
I also hate tagging. Don't get me wrong, tags are such a smart idea, and I would never want them to be eliminated. The worst thing about tags, though, is inconsistency, and this is why I hate tagging anything myself. Recipe or recipes? Howto or how-to? How-to or DIY? Or how-to and DIY? I hate it, and so I avoid using Delicious.
It would certainly be good if I could get over it and learn to love tagging, but I've decided to stop holding my breath. It occurred to me that if I could search the content of the pages that I bookmark, I wouldn't have to rely on tags. So I've been looking at my options.
Google Custom Search Engine
Pro: Can make entire domain searchable without adding each individual page.
Con: Limit of 5000 pages/sites.
Google Bookmarks
Pro: Google may decide to terminate the service, but they're not likely to use my data. Seems like it would be easy to use.
Con: Can't share bookmarks. Would need to check that I'm signed into the right Google account before adding bookmarks.
Evernote
Pro: Data is copied web account and hard drive. Don't have to worry about Evernote website or sites I've saved going down.
Con: Data is copied web account and hard drive. Process is slow, and there's a monthly limit for free accounts.
del.izzy
Pro: Search engine that works with hugely popular Delicious.
Con: Search engine that works with hugely annoying Delicious. Doesn't inspire confidence that it will still be around and working in the long term.
DeliGoo
Pro: Search engine that works with hugely popular Delicious.
Con: Search engine that works with hugely annoying Delicious. Site is down and may never return.
Diigo
Pro: Has a lot of features and has been getting good press.
Con: When I signed up with Diigo, they asked for first name, last name, and username. There is no option to keep your real name private, and in fact that's the name that gets plastered all over the site. While there is nothing preventing me from entering a pseudonym, the fact that they think this is a good idea says to me that I'm not the kind of user they want. They seem to be targeting respectable business and academic users. If they were providing a unique service, I might be willing to overlook it and plant my flag, but there are so many other other options.
Simpy
Pro: It looks easy to use and has all the right features.
Con: The official blog hasn't been updated in a year, and I wonder if they have the user base and revenue stream to still be around in the long term.
There is one other bookmarking site I've tried, namely ma.gnolia. I liked it better than Delicious, but then I lost all my bookmarks when the site went down. This has made me more concerned with reliability and longevity than I might have been.
Having written all this out, I'm leaning toward Google Bookmarks or Simpy. I'm going to go do more research, maybe sign up and give them a try. And perhaps I will report back later.
I tried Opera and fell in love with tabs and mouse gestures, but I couldn't make the switch. I think it was that in Windows Me the IME wouldn't work with non-Microsoft programs, and I didn't want to open a different browser every time I needed to type in Japanese.
Then I moved up to Windows XP and Firefox. And from day one I've had a tab problem. There's an email tab and an LJ tab and a Google Reader tab, a fic I want to read, something cool I want to post about or share with someone, something I want to buy, a new site or software I want to try out, and on and on and on. At the end of the day I haven't dealt with all those things, so the next day I'll restore my session--I can't live without Tab Mix Plus--but instead of going through my backlog, I open a whole bunch of new tabs. So each day my tabs increase in number. When I get up around 100 I'll start pruning. By then I'll have lost interest in some of the old tabs, but I never get much below 100 tabs. Eventually something will happen and I won't be able to restore the session* and then the whole process starts over again.
I really want to find a way of better dealing with my tabs so they don't sit open for days, weeks, months at a time. One category of tabs is the stuff I want to read later. I have recently solved this problem with a wonderful little add-on called Read It Later. It's simple and easy and I love it.
There's another extension I use that's called Too Many Tabs. (Yes, really.) It's very similar in function to Read It Later, basically temporary bookmarks that are easy to add and remove. The difference is that where Read It Later is an icon with a simple drop down menu of items arranged in chronological order, Too Many Tabs is a whole bar that mimics a row of regular tabs with a drop down menu that allows you to change rows. You can rename the rows and they basically function like folders. It's useful in that it gets some of those tabs out of the way, and I don't have to keep reloading them every time I start Firefox. But it's a temporary solution. I have a row of fics to read from before I started using Read It Later, and that's fine. Likewise with my row of things to download. Or maybe I open a bunch of tabs to compare products or services and I want to save them until I make a decision. The problem is that I have too many tabs that need to be stored more permanently, and in such a way that I can easily find them again.
The obvious choice would be Delicious. But, see, I fucking hate Delicious. I hate the Firefox extension. The old del.icio.us one was fine, and I used to use Nightly Tester Tools to force it to work, but eventually I had to switch to the updated one. I ended up having to disable it because it stopped letting me add to my Firefox bookmarks. I've avoided enabling it again because I hate the way it tries to sync your bookmarks. I know you can turn off the sync, but the way I remember it automatically started syncing while I fumbled around in the menu trying to figure out how to stop it. It may well be that I remember it being worse that it is. It may even be that since I only disabled rather than uninstalled it, that my options have been saved. I don't know. But it isn't just that add-on that I hate.
I also hate tagging. Don't get me wrong, tags are such a smart idea, and I would never want them to be eliminated. The worst thing about tags, though, is inconsistency, and this is why I hate tagging anything myself. Recipe or recipes? Howto or how-to? How-to or DIY? Or how-to and DIY? I hate it, and so I avoid using Delicious.
It would certainly be good if I could get over it and learn to love tagging, but I've decided to stop holding my breath. It occurred to me that if I could search the content of the pages that I bookmark, I wouldn't have to rely on tags. So I've been looking at my options.
Google Custom Search Engine
Pro: Can make entire domain searchable without adding each individual page.
Con: Limit of 5000 pages/sites.
Google Bookmarks
Pro: Google may decide to terminate the service, but they're not likely to use my data. Seems like it would be easy to use.
Con: Can't share bookmarks. Would need to check that I'm signed into the right Google account before adding bookmarks.
Evernote
Pro: Data is copied web account and hard drive. Don't have to worry about Evernote website or sites I've saved going down.
Con: Data is copied web account and hard drive. Process is slow, and there's a monthly limit for free accounts.
del.izzy
Pro: Search engine that works with hugely popular Delicious.
Con: Search engine that works with hugely annoying Delicious. Doesn't inspire confidence that it will still be around and working in the long term.
DeliGoo
Pro: Search engine that works with hugely popular Delicious.
Con: Search engine that works with hugely annoying Delicious. Site is down and may never return.
Diigo
Pro: Has a lot of features and has been getting good press.
Con: When I signed up with Diigo, they asked for first name, last name, and username. There is no option to keep your real name private, and in fact that's the name that gets plastered all over the site. While there is nothing preventing me from entering a pseudonym, the fact that they think this is a good idea says to me that I'm not the kind of user they want. They seem to be targeting respectable business and academic users. If they were providing a unique service, I might be willing to overlook it and plant my flag, but there are so many other other options.
Simpy
Pro: It looks easy to use and has all the right features.
Con: The official blog hasn't been updated in a year, and I wonder if they have the user base and revenue stream to still be around in the long term.
There is one other bookmarking site I've tried, namely ma.gnolia. I liked it better than Delicious, but then I lost all my bookmarks when the site went down. This has made me more concerned with reliability and longevity than I might have been.
Having written all this out, I'm leaning toward Google Bookmarks or Simpy. I'm going to go do more research, maybe sign up and give them a try. And perhaps I will report back later.
