Chrome Add-In Turns Browser Tabs Into Outliner

Started by Cassius on 11/18/2012
Paulo Diniz 12/16/2012 9:10 pm
I have to bump this, AMAZING add-on. It seems that it's still in early development, and combined to the fact that the developer made some awkward UI/UX decisions in my perception, almost made me miss the brilliance of this at the first try. But with the right settings it gives you a wonderful function:

It automatically produces an outline (i mean, structured tree) of all your browsing activity and over this gives you fine grain control of loading and unloading tabs from memory, append notes in the tree, etc. For tabiters, it's amazing.

Users of this forum will want to use it with the "Tree Style Tabs" preference ON, at the extension settings, which is what gives you the structured tree I've just mentioned.

Also, it is important that you turn off chrome's option to remember tabs open at previous session (the 'continue where i left off' function), otherwise you'll get duplicate items on the tree. But consider that the extension will remember the previous session tabs and will allow you to reload them, if you desire.

Lastly, this is very personal, but I don't like the auto scrolling of the tree which is currently impossible to turn off in the settings, it seems to me that its "too much" happening every time you switch a tab, but the workaround to this is use the so called "cloned view" of the tree, which is a secondary "tab outliner" window that you can summon, and this one doesn't auto-scroll ever. And then close the primary "tab outliner" view.

Hopefully this extension will continue to be mantained and developed, as its a great asset.
jimspoon 12/17/2012 5:09 am
I used Tabs Outliner for a while, but ended up dropping it. For me the best tab management extension is for Firefox - called Tabgroups Manager. You have a horizontal row of tab group tabs that resides above the web page tabs. You can simply drag and drop your web page tabs to the desired group tab. You can bookmark tabgroups, hibernate and restore them, etc. Works great. Unfortunately, there's nothing really similar for Chrome. It seems that the Chrome UI is not as flexible as Firefox's - in Chrome I don't think you can add a horizontal toolbar, or have multiple rows of tabs, etc.

here's a pic that shows the TabGroups Manager row of group tabs.

http://tmpl.at/12uKEUw


Foolness 12/18/2012 1:22 pm
jimspoon wrote:
Unfortunately, there's nothing really similar
for Chrome. It seems that the Chrome UI is not as flexible as Firefox's
- in Chrome I don't think you can add a horizontal toolbar, or have
multiple rows of tabs, etc.

here's a pic that shows the TabGroups Manager row of group tabs.

http://tmpl.at/12uKEUw


While technically this might be true (or false, I don't know.) Chrome doesn't need toolbars for groups and it has some things similar if not superior to Firefox.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-extensions-chrome-tab-management/

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/organize-chrome-extensions-groups-speed-browsing-context/

Also for a long time, Opera has had a Windows Panel.
jimspoon 12/18/2012 4:50 pm
Thanks for those links, Foolness. I think I can really use that Context extension for limiting memory use.

I've tried most of those tab management extensions for Chrome. For me none of them come close to Tabgroups Manager for Firefox. The beauty of TGM is that it's so easy and non-disruptive. Without leaving the page you're browsing, you just drag a tab a very short distance to the appropriate tabgroup tab in the row above, and you're done. It's one of those extensions for which I've found no adequate replacement in Chrome - the others would be Scrapbook and Tab Mix Plus.

And for me that's the problem with Tabs Outliner extension - too disruptive. You have to go to a separate window to manage your tabs in the browsing window. You have to find the tab you want to move in a (potentially) long outline of open/closed tabs, and drag it perhaps a long distance to the destination, and position your mouse VERY precisely and release your mouse button.



Foolness 12/18/2012 5:13 pm
No problem jimspoon.

That's how ManageMyTabs work though you have to deal with the pop-up. I guess it depends on how non-disruptive you want it to be. For example Opera's stacks are even less disruptive than TabGroup Manager (pre-installed/Opera being able to handle and load more tabs) but I find it to be more disruptive because I don't get a "quick preview" interface of what I have grouped. That's what I meant by Chrome being able to replace some of the features.

I do agree that it's disruptive when it has to be a list like an Outliner but most of the barebones Chrome Session managers (managemytabs not being one of them, though all you need is to look at the title of your tabgroup and the Speed Dial-like pictures inside of them) don't require lists. Something that's missing from Firefox: That simple "group then collect then preview into a tab set" reading/closing mechanic as even tabgroups that are opened still take up memory which can be disruptive.

Scrapbook though and Tab Mix Plus, yeah Firefox exclusive.