Laptop Productivity improvements — Part I : Managing Browser Tabs

I am sucker for clicking links. It would be a surprise if, at any point of time, I had less than 100 tabs open. Worse, I used to use Google Chrome as my primary browser. The thing about Chrome is that, outside all the niceties that people think it has, is that it is a memory hog. Can you imagine how terrible it is when the browser takes up more memory than the OS itself?!

Early this year, I consciously started using Firefox. No longer the memory hog. But alas, Firefox crashed every now and then. Ok, ok — Chrome too crashed. But the difference is that Chrome kills only that tab (A common geek joke is that Chrome is an OS! … Wait, is it not a joke? What’s the Chromebook then? Grrrr..). When Firefox crashes, all the windows close down.

I like to see all the links that I’ve clicked. So, while I’ve tried Pocket, it doesn’t work that great for me. And over this period of time, I slowly started using Chrome again and now, ‘ve had two browsers open all the time — Chrome and Firefox.

Last week, I found a great article on HN — on how someone efficiently managed 227 tabs (http://www.vox.com/2015/6/1/8695555/browser-tabs). It has been awesome ever since.

I got back to Firefox as my primary browser. I installed the add-ons: Tree Style Tab, Tab Mix Plus, Session Manager and BarTab Lite X. Tabs that I don’t use are suspended. All tabs are vertically listed. So very convenient.

On Chrome, I’ve installed OneTab and The Great Suspender. While OneTab isn’t as awesome as Tree Style Tab, it has ensured that all the links are listed in one page and the memory imprint has vastly reduced. Some reviews haven’t been so kind on OneTab, but it has been fine so far.

(My laptop is a Mac)