Project based Tab-grouping

paul157

Hello Community,

I am new here, so forgive me if that had been posted before, i tried to make a quick search but hundreds of topics with limited order are quite confusing.

So, here is my idea: When working with different browsers, many people have millions of tabs open. What is able in Vivaldi is to stack tabs, yet this gives only small improvement in organisational design. Therefore, what I dream of;

A project-based Browser.

What do I Imagine?

First, most people of nowadays work and private live have multiple projects at any point of time. This could include the Work projects, here e.g. academical research or as well in other fields of work (of whom I don't know of). Paired with personal projects as knee problems or the garden house one wants to build.

For me it often happens that I leave some of the tabs open, as I could not finish building the house yet or my knees will still hurt in several years, and projects take even more time. I could bookmark some pages but firstly this takes time and often the amount of tabs exceeds on what is realistic to bookmark (Only in some projects its realistic to remain with just a few bookmarks.) However, each of those is a different "Project". This means I end up with opening new tabs of another topic when not having closed the old tabs as i need them again. Yet something else is more urgent.

So, what I had suggested is a "button-based screen"(with this screen fastly accessible somewhere in the corner) like the bookmark screen but with different Projects. Every time you start working on a new Project, e.g. improving the health of your knee if you hadn't done so before, you create a new Button (=project) and name it once (or if you don’t name it, the name of your first search term within this project will appear).

So, what is supposed to happen now? once you open Vivaldi (in the project-based mode), this project-screen shows up. None of the tabs you had used before will be loaded. So, only once you click on one of the screens, Vivaldi opens the tabs connected to this project in a new window, yet leaves the other ones closed - they will therefore not use the computers resources besides very few bits to save the pages. Of course, multiple windows with different projects could be opened.

What does it help?

The tabs are clearly clustered according to the users wishes; even multiple open Tabs do not lead to total confusion.
This possibility of creating new projects will automatically lead to less messy tab creations as the user will open a new project once he researches something different, to keep his old project(s) clean.
Finished projects can be closed as a whole, without filtering the tabs, what is still of use and what not.
A "temporary-project" that will automatically be deleted upon reopening Vivaldi could/should also be implemented to make quick unrelated research. Also, a project for "other" stuff that might be reused but is not related to one project might be possible. (similar to the normal browser settings of “home screen” or “reopen tabs of the last session”.)
(outlook) A structure to view previously opened tabs in the clearest and most intuitive way can also be thought of. maybe users could even choose different themes here?

Here a simple view of how this might look like (book mark overview used)

Pros:

probably easy to implement
better organisation
saving performance

cons:

if activated: one more click upon opening the browser for random searches.

Please promote this Idea if you think it is a good one. Share, upvote, or if you're a programmer, implement. If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Also please add your thoughts on any missing pros and cons and specially any improvements you have to this Idea.

Thanks for your attention and best wishes,
Paul

paul157

@paul157

I purposely left out other, not central information to keep my post somewhat slim. The amazing Vivaldi tools like pannels can of course still be used e.g. for quick searches in wikipedia, yet the "temporary project" is used to do a project that needs multiple tabs but is onely used for one day or a pre-up-search for projects

A Former User

Hello, welcome to the community!

I think what you’re looking for is already (mostly) available, it’s called profiles. They also allow you to have settings (themes etc.) different for each one.

There is also a request to have tab groups in one profile.

You suggest some features that aren’t contained neither in profiles nor in the request (AFAIK), such as the start-up project selection screen, would you mind adding this e.g. to the tab groups request?

Pesala

@paul157 I don't know anyone who has millions of tabs open. About 15% of users open more than 100 tabs.

What you are looking for is already available.

See help on Sessions

It is the perfect way to manage multiple projects. You don't need to open any tabs until they are needed. Each session remembers tab stacks and tiled tabs, plus zoom level and scroll position. The Open Session dialogue sorts sessions by name, date, or number of tabs. Sessions can be opened in their own window, or in the current window.

Open Session Dialog.png

There are 59 feature requests about Sessions. Add the link as a web panel to make searching much easier. Just change the search text to find different topics.

Pathduck

@paul157 You get an upvote from me at least for a well thought out and formulated request

There have certainly been other feature requests on the same issue. I actually think a lot of what you're suggesting can be handled with simply expanding on the existing features like Tab Stacks, Sessions and especially the Window Panel. The Window Panel is a very powerful feature but needs more work to be truly useful for organising information. Some improvements are badly needed:

Renaming of Tab Stacks must be enabled by default. Currently it's not, which means a lot of users will never even know about it.
Tab Stacks saved as bookmarks must be named after its name not "Saved Tab Selection (date)" as it is now.
Opening Bookmark folders as new Tab Stacks - named as the folder.
Opening Sessions as new Tab Stacks - named as the Session.
Ability to easily open and examine the content of saved Sessions directly from the Window Panel. Currently Open Sessions are hidden under the File menu. We can already save sessions from the panel, why can't we open a session from the same place?
Tab Stacks could even contain other stacks, much as a bookmark folder can contain sub-folders.
Probably a lot more

I don't necessarily think different Profiles are a good solution though. First of all not a lot of users know about profiles at all, secondly Profiles don't share settings and users would not want to go through setting it up like they want again and again. Third, they are really meant for different uses; sharing the browser with others or for completely separating work and private browsing.

To add my very personal opinion on this: If you're doing research over a long time, bookmarks are really the way to go. They're more easily arranged in folders and sub-folders, they can be easily added and removed from, and don't need to be loaded up as tabs at all times. Browsers can easily handle thousands of bookmarks, but not thousands of tabs (even if hibernated).

And with tabs and stacks, if the browser crashes for some reason or other you'd risk losing it all, something we've seen quite frequently here unfortunately. No piece of software is free from crashing bugs

To be honest, if you're doing serious research on a variety of subjects, I'd say the best tool is the age-old practice of actually taking notes, be it in a word processor, notepad or spreadsheet, with hotlinks to the sources. Or even dedicated software (mind mapping) for such a purpose. I don't think a browser is the best tool for properly organising information. Finding it yes, but not so much making sense of it.

SofiaLenss

This post is deleted!

LonM

Thank you for your request. As this post has had less than 5 votes over 4 years it will now be archived. You can make a new request if you feel it is still needed in the browser.