48 Comments - Dirty Red - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:01 am: I run Firefox so they don’t overwhelm the CPU. - Google Is Your Friend - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:03 am: Get the Session Buddy extension for your browser, if available. Allows you to save tabs and windows, organize and sort, export to spreadsheets. - 47th Ward - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:04 am: Too many open tabs is not a problem for me. Only when I’m doing research and needing to go back and forth between sites, which is rare for me. I still use my printer for important articles. I’m old school that way. I still like paper. - Arsenal - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:04 am: Doesn’t really cause me problems besides anxiety when I see the tabs start to compress to fit them all in. - Fav Human - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:08 am: I have lots of open tabs, (but not even close to 40). It’s a great way to organize and prioritize. I use Brave, a chromium fork, no CPU or memory issues with as many as 15 or so. - RNUG - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:13 am: Nope. Rarely keep ore than 2 or 3 open. - Joe Bidenopolous - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:14 am: I used to have a major tabs problem - usually had at least 40 open - but it’s better now. I have 6 open on my phone and another 4 on my computer. Most are just reminders. My old problem was getting through everything I wanted to read. Maybe the pandemic solved that… - Todd - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:15 am: yes and when my computer locks up, I pull the plug and reboot it. If I hadn’t read it by then, I don’t restore them and start over. Capfax usually is no more than 2 tabs, youtube is about 3-4 Ebay is 3-4 then about another 8 Are we talking about all brousers or just one? - Fool On The Hill - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:16 am: I use open tabs as a reminder to come back to the item, sometimes it works…sometimes, well, it sits there until we have a power surge. - TJ - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:18 am: I’m anti-many tabs. I usually have only one or two tabs open. - Treefiddy - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:21 am: I currently have 26 open tabs across three windows in Chrome. My New Year’s resolution is to try and be better at it and keep all the tabs for articles I want to read later in a minimized window I can look at later, while keeping open work-related tabs on my main screen. It’s been hit-or-miss so far… - Peanut Gallery - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:22 am: I get to the point every afternoon where I rage about not being able to find a document or web page because I have too many tabs open. I guess I can close that article from 7:30 am that I already half-read. - Huh? - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:23 am: My problem isn’t open broeser tabs. My problem is too many open emails and files. - TaxTheMemes - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:32 am: I have exemplary tab management. An active purpose for each. Get your lives together, friends. - JoanP - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:32 am: I rarely have more than a couple of tabs open, so it’s not a problem for me. - Because I said so.... - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:34 am: On occasion, I accidently close them all out and it ticks me off but I usually don’t have more than 10-12 open. Not to veer to far from the question but how about unopened emails? That gives me anxiety but others aren’t bothered by over a thousand unopened ones. - Jake From Elwood - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:42 am: I dont’ do open tabs. I put frequent pages in favorites. And I email myself links to articles I want to get to later and I star them in my inbox. Works for me. - Suburban Mom - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:46 am: right now I have 40-50 tabs across four windows. My New year’s resolution was to have fewer tabs open, so that’s a dramatic improvement. - Amalia - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:54 am: what’s an open tab? not the soda, no tab at a bar, no tabs open. - Linus - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:57 am: I close down everything, all tabs, nightly. But not until after I’ve copied and pasted too many links into an email that I send myself to ignore the following day. It’s a sickness. - Candy Dogood - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:58 am: Before tabs were a thing I would have multiple browser applications open. During my childhood one of the first things that would happen when ever my father sat down at the PC is he would unceremoniously close all of the browsers I had open. I usually have dozens of tabs open. When it’s a problem, will use task manager to close the application do what I need to do, and restart the application and recover all of the tabs. I think my open tabs are reflective of my optimism. I usually try to go through them on Sunday mornings and read or close. - Galway Bay - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 10:58 am: I left a tab open at my local bar. Went back and paid it the next day - Ducky LaMoore - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 11:05 am: Tab? Kid, I can’t give you a tab unless you order something. - Siriously - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 11:06 am: Yes. Open tabs is an issue, when I get to about 10 I start to close and delete. But now that I have to use microsoft office my new problem is 25 open emails that I wanted to circle back to at the bottom of my desktop. For me, emails worse than tabs. Having too many Cap Fax tabs open is not a problem, it’s more like a status symbol. - Lurker - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 11:16 am: I use Edge and have the default set to close all tabs. On my phone, I close all tabs too. At my age and forgetfulness, it makes each internet journey a new and exciting adventure that I love. - Leslie K - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 11:18 am: I keep tabs open on my phone the way I keep things in my Amazon cart–not ready to read (buy), but no ready to let go of. Tabs on my desktop are mostly to remind me that I began something in the morning that I never got back to that day. I close and restart the next day. - Nick Name - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 11:20 am: I have as few tabs open as possible. Ideally, just one. If necessary, two, but seldom more than that. - Pot calling kettle - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 11:21 am: I had no idea this was a thing. LOL I have tabs open for my two primary email accounts, and one or two open for what I am reading/working on. I occasionally open a few more for research, but I close them when I’m done - bookmarking anything I might need to come back to. For all of those articles I want to read but don’t have the time, I bookmark them in a folder titled “to read/watch” or print to pdf and drop the pdf in a folder on my desktop titled “to read/watch.” (Full disclosure: those folders are full of stuff that will probably never be read or watched.) - Out Here In The Middle - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 11:21 am: I use a to-do list app that easily adds URL’s as tasks. When I open a site that I want to read but don’t have time I simply add it as a task. Not only saved, but easily available later on any of my devices. - FormerParatrooper - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 11:29 am: 3 open at the most if I have to reference something, otherwise one stays while I am on it. I can’t stand having emails either. Once they are done and answered, I delete or file them to the appropriate folder. - Jabes - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 11:35 am: I either save them to favorites or save to something like “Pocket.” Now, how frequently I ever look at them again if they’re in Pocket is another story. - 4 percent - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 11:44 am: I miss the old ring-tabs on beer cans. - vern - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 11:48 am: I use Chrome on a Mac, so I’m able to combine the Chrome tab-grouping function and the Mac’s multiple desktops to keep everything navigable. Hard to tell if that’s a problem or not. It’s a bit like having a ton of stuff in a big house; if the house were smaller you’d be a hoarder but if there’s a place for everything… - Open Tabs aren't the problem.... - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 11:49 am: …it’s the lack of sufficient RAM. Mandate minimum 64Gb DDR5 for cpus… ….i have no idea if RAM matters. - G'Kar - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 11:54 am: Geesh, I thought having six tabs open were too many, but it turns out that I am just a piker [banned punctuation] - ArchPundit - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 12:18 pm: Generally no. I’m pretty specific about organizing my desktop (specific=obsessive) and so I manage the tabs regularly. Every once in a while a second browser window will promulgate a bunch of tabs when I’m working on data and then I have to take the time to go through and weed out the unnecessary ones. - ArchPundit - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 12:19 pm: oh, and G’Kar I’ve been doing a rewatch of Babylon 5 and enjoying it–did you know JMS is writing a new pilot for CW? - New Day - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 12:32 pm: I don’t know if I would define it as a problem, but there certainly are dozens opened on my desktop at the office and primary laptop at home including CapFax, articles I need to read but haven’t gotten around to, vacation research, you name it. But it becomes traumatic when you reboot and accidentally start the browser without restoring the tabs. When that happens, then yea, I’m 100% with Hannah on this one. - whoa - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 12:34 pm: I’m the exact opposite of a lot of the commenters it seems. I can’t stand having multiple tabs open, I try to remove them all by the end of the day - gives me a lot of anxiety if I have a bunch open. - Homebody - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 12:45 pm: I don’t see a purpose to keep more than a handful of tabs open. During the workday I’ll probably keep 5 or 6 open for things I will access multiple times over the course of the day (specific statutes and rule sets that I refer to often, Lexis/Westlaw, etc). At home I’ll keep open tabs that I want to see notifications on (facebook, twitter, gmail) but otherwise generally have no more than two others open at any point in time, depending on what I’m actively working on. Cluttered tabs are like a cluttered desk. You’re not actually improving your productivity, you’re just giving yourself anxiety. Stop it. - Anon again - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 12:51 pm: I have at most five tabs open at any time. I didn’t realize this is a thing? - MisterJayEm - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 1:04 pm: “Do you have problems with open tabs?” My phone’s chrome browser (one of three) currently has 68 open tabs. So no, I don’t have a problem opening tabs. – MrJM - Oxfordian - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 1:14 pm: Tons of tabs in multiple windows. Work in one window, articles to read in another window, capfax gets its own window. - Stuff Happens - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 1:40 pm: I use the Marvellous Suspender chrome plugin, which puts unused tabs to sleep but doesn’t close them. I have several hundred open on three different screens on the same computer, and I pare them down every once in a while. But there’s the vacation place ones, the dinner idea ones, the “problem I’m trying to solve at work but haven’t yet so I can’t close them” ones, the plants I want to get for the garden ones, the story I want to show my wife, the video I want to show my kids, the purchase I want to make but need spousal consent first… I’m a tab hoarder. At the end of the week I usually cycle through the right half and remove all of the cruft, but I still have hundreds (386 right now). - thunderspirit - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 2:20 pm: == My phone’s chrome browser (one of three) currently has 68 open tabs. So no, I don’t have a problem opening tabs. – MrJM == I don’t make it to 68 tabs; but “problem” to me indicates that I see a need to change. And I don’t. Neither do the 14 open tabs on one browser nor the 13 open tabs on another browser. I don’t have a problem. I have a time deficiency. - yinn - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 2:58 pm: Typically just a couple tabs open unless totally working in the zone, in which case I’ll stop and get reorganized if starting to feel stressed. Feel unfinished for the day unless I’ve closed all tabs, though I will bookmark if I need to and that’s often the best starting place for the next day. - The Velvet Frog - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 3:42 pm: I think my phone stops counting at 99 tabs. And I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a number listed in that corner. - cermak_rd - Wednesday, Feb 9, 22 @ 3:46 pm: Gosh yes. I recently upgraded my computer to one with 64G RAM and that has majorly helped with that. My poor old 8G RAM one would just stumble after a while. I will usually have a tab for memrise, 1 for duolingo, a handful to the dw.com, 1 to twitter, a couple to github, 1 or 2 to capfax, a few random googles, maybe a spec sheet or something for piece of hw or chip, and it just gets really unwieldy to the point where I cannot find things quickly (I mean the not stumbling is good but this is poor optimization on my part!) Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.