Tabs Outliner
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Review:
In short, when I started using this extension for myself I managed to drop my constantly open tabs count from ~800 to ~80. But users with a more normal 5-15 tabs count found this extension indispensable also - see the reviews! I mention my digits just for a record, so you will know the roots of this stuff. As this is the tool which was an ultimate weapon to win the really tough warfare - for people with the too many tabs affliction, who regularly bloated browsers with dozens of open tabs, this is simply a lifesaver. = FEATURES = ☀...
Tabs Outliner Review
In short, when I started using this extension for myself I managed to drop my constantly open tabs count from ~800 to ~80.
But users with a more normal 5-15 tabs count found this extension indispensable also - see the reviews!
I mention my digits just for a record, so you will know the roots of this stuff. As this is the tool which was an ultimate weapon to win the really tough warfare - for people with the too many tabs affliction, who regularly bloated browsers with dozens of open tabs, this is simply a lifesaver.
= FEATURES =
☀ Ultimate Overview - for all of your open, and not so open (read further), browser windows and tabs, in a resizable vertical side view, with a Tree Style Tab feature.
☀ A KILLER FEATURE - it has the unique ability to close and preserve “in place” any tab or window, without removing them from the original context in the tree. Then, if needed, reopen them in the same way you select already open windows or tabs.
This is a real innovation in Web browser usability. It diminishes the cognitive distinction between closed-preserved and open tabs. Therefore, there will be no substantial difference between closed or open tabs, and because of this, there will be no desire to keep them all open anymore!!!
For me, this became the biggest and most useful invention since Web browsers adopted tabbed browsing.
Actually, we are keeping tabs open most of the time not because we need them continuously, but because we want them to stay open to remind us about something unfinished, or about some thought related to them. Yet, taking into account very low default observability for such tabs, this is very ineffective.
However, the bad observability is not the worst problem; a much bigger problem is that all of these open tabs consume A LOT of RAM and CPU (plus often NETWORK BANDWIDTH) resources of a PC — sometimes, ALL OF THEM! I have a six core PC with 16GB of RAM, and in the past most of these resources were constantly consumed by open tabs. Now, with the help of this extension, it really feels like an absolutely new PC from a new era! No SSD, additional 10 CPU cores, or 100GB of RAM will give you this feeling if you happen to have the habit of leaving tabs open continually. In time, they tend to consume all available resources, and for some of us, it’s a very severe problem.
☀ Innovative Tabs Outlining And Organizing Features – you will be able to annotate windows and tabs, add comments to them, notes, a summary of main ideas, to-do items. Organize all of this in logical hierarchies and delimited groups; freely reorder to specify priority or importance.
The innovation is in fact that you will be able to do this not only with somewhere saved links - but with open tabs and windows!
☀ Crash Resistance and Restore Feature Done Right - no more hassles after browser crash or sudden system restart. You will not be forced into an all or nothing choice. This extension makes it possible to reopen only windows you need NOW, or even some individual tabs inside them, without losing others. They will be available to reopen anytime you decide, and in the same context and place where they crashed.
It feels so natural that, actually, you will not think about reopening crashed tabs as a special operation.
If you already use some session saving extension, then you know that actually, because of associated hassles, you very rarely reopen these, buried in some separate lists, crashed sessions. Now, all crashed windows and tabs will be available to review and easily clean in the original context, without consuming any resources, along with new tabs, as if you simply continue your session without any crash.
In addition, there will be fewer crashes now, because often crashes are the result of consuming all of your resources by hundreds of open tabs. So, naturally, when Chrome proposed to restore all of them again, after a crash, or PC restart, you were forced to make a choice — lose all these “remind me of something” tabs, or have again a completely unresponsive PC — no more need for such tough decisions! All of your content will be preserved after a crash or sudden PC restart, and this will not require complete reopening of all crashed tabs.
☀ A Liberation For Your Bookmarks Collections - will help liberate your bookmarks from continuous pollution by closed-for-later sites. Therefore, bookmarks will be used for what they are intended to do, and for what they were invented for — quickly reopen sets of regularly visited pages, instead of serving as a badly organized dump for tabs, which you urgently closed for some reason in the past.
☀ Tabs Lists Exporter - easily export and share the annotated list of your tabs through GoogleDoc, Word, Evernote or many other programs. Hierarchies of windows can be exported simple by drag and drop. Or save your full collection as a standard, clean, HTML file (by Ctrl-S in the main window).
☀ One Click Procrastination Stopper - this tool can break the procrastination chain of continuous Net surfing.
Often, you cannot simply close all of your tabs and start your work because you have a feeling that you might lose something - not just the tabs but also your context and environment. Therefore, they stay active, and distract your attention from your work, and highly increase the possibility of another e-break and cyberslacking. This messy browsing session actually becomes a minefield of distraction.
This extension has a quick cure for this — a button to close all active tabs, but leave links to them in tree, and in the original context, with a possibility to restore everything anytime you wish. You will be able to stop your Net procrastination in one click!
Then, often, you will find, that you actually do not even want, or need to reopen all of these, formerly tempting tabs. They were tempting only because you had more important work.
This is also sure way to quickly close all of your windows in case your boss comes into the room (a boss, behind your shoulders, is also very good cure for procrastinators, maybe even best ; ) so this extension can serve as some sort of panic button.
= Epilogue : ) =
I actually do not know any analogs to this solution; it is unique. And all who continue to use Firefox because of side view for tabs, or because of legendary Tree Style Tab add-on, now you can switch to Chrome. And with big bonuses — much better overview for all open windows, and the ability to unload any tab or window yet retain them in the original context. With a possibility to annotate, manage and reopen all of them further ( reopening closed tabs is actually rarely needed, the title is often completely sufficient to refresh your memory of everything associated within them.
Most people keep tabs open as "todo" items or "reminders", or to “read it later”, not out of an actual desire to have the tab loaded, so this will allow you to seriously reduce open tabs count if you have this problem).
= FAQ =
Q: Does this extension send URLs we access somewhere?
A: NO!
Q: Does this force a particular organization on our tabs in someway? Is this useful only as some organizer?
A: No. It is possible, and some users even use it this way, but for tab addicts it is impractical to be in any way forced to organize the raw stream of tabs - the stream is simply too big. This is why all classic session savers are actually not very practical for really heavy weight tabiters, because they force to operate windows and tabs in sets. And as so, before saving the set, you are forced to have all the tabs opened and in RAM to collect the set. This extension, despite the name and the fact it has powerful organizational capabilities, and plans to include more of this (like tags), does not really force you to organize anything - the main aim and idea is to be super effective in serving and managing unorganized raw tabs torrent. So you will be not forced to collect some set of open tabs in memory only to bury it later in some hidden lists of session saver forever, after one of the browser crashes. You will be able to gradually close-save older tabs. It is more like your browsing workbook, not some sort of tabs catalog with a grand scheme, or periodic snapshots of your working session. Yet of course it is possible to mimic all the capabilities of the classic session savers in it.
Q: Can this save tab back button history?
A: No. Unfortunately, due to Chrome limitations, extensions cannot restore the history of reopened tabs.
= Second Epilogue ; ) =
Installation of this extension does not require restart. It will not change default browser behavior. Special attention was given to keep it CPU and RAM friendly. It does not send private data anywhere or even access it
One thing really worth emphasizing, as it is for some reason very underrated and undervalued by general public:
☆☆☆☆☆
THIS EXTENSION DOES NOT DECLARE THE "ACCESS YOUR DATA ON ALL WEBSITES" RIGHT!
☆☆☆☆☆
Unlike many many others. There really are a lot of reasons why such broad access rights is a bad thing. But let's leave aside really serious privacy and security considerations (like the fact that by hacking the developer's account the hacker can gain control on all your accounts and data, through the extensions autoupdate feature). There is some real problem - such access rights have their own price in terms of browser performance, stability and resources consumption, as in general, extensions that declare such rights inject additional special content scripts in all your tabs, a huge NO NO for any tab addict, with hundreds of tabs.
So, add Tabs Outliner to Chrome confidently, I am sure, this will give you never before seen control over all of your Chrome windows, and improve your everyday browsing experience. This is one of the best Chrome productivity tools and it really helps keep track of all of your browsing activity, it does not matter if you have 10 or 1000 open tabs regularly.
But note, simply installing is not enough, start using it! This extension looks complex, but it can be effectively used completely without all the buttons in the bottom, these buttons can be learned much later. Many of them actually become important only if, and after, you will collect several thousands nodes in your tree.
Don't forget to Rate 5 ☆ ! ; ) Thanks!
My contact information: [email protected]
= Want more? - ok, a bonus section =
Some unedited screenshots and nice pictures if you write an article or blog post and need one:
http://imgur.com/HkTGWJT
http://imgur.com/o8ZvIDH
http://imgur.com/UgwzDbh
http://imgur.com/TXGUm0r
= Changelog (sort of) =
There was a lot of releases since the first one (about forty). But they are mostly bug fixes, support fixes because of changes in Chrome (sometime very huge), documentation tweaks and so on.
Will list only the most important changes which you might miss:
- The marked windows is now treated differently on close, see the updated quick start section (they become saved with all the tabs if contains any notes or marks).
- The long annoying bug with crashed window labels is now fixed. For all who utilize this “bug” to actually restore windows from last closed session i recommend to use the “Recently closed list” - it’s the Chrome feature, can be found in the bottom right corner of the every new tab. This list contain recently closed windows, including the ones that was closed in last session, so unmarked windows can be restored from it (marked will stay in tree anyway), also it is handy to restore accidentally deleted in TO windows.
- The storage engine become much more robust and can handle really bad Chrome profile data corruptions (which unfortunately really happens in the wild). Also saving of the changes done immediately before TO and Chrome complete close is much more sturdy now.
- Added more options to configure appearance, position and colors (especially useful for problematic TN screens).
- There is now possible to turn off automatic scroll (see the options) for main view.
- Tree Style Tabs feature is now on by default for all new users and it is really recommended to enable it for all who install this thing in times when this option was not so recommended to use.
P.S. As for outliner features, this is a beta preview. There is a lot of room to improve. For example, in future versions, it will be possible to add icons to nodes, along with other marks, and create independent trees in new documents. A more convenient way to add and edit notes in place will be added, possibility to rename windows and tabs, full keyboard support for editing and navigating inside the tree, multi-select, undo/redo, remote view to access your sessions from mobiles and other PCs (I will never force you to send your private browsing session data somewhere to the cloud - this feature will be optional, and/or encrypted on the client). And more.
P.P.S. To be able to have up to the 1000 open tabs you need to fine-tune your OS. All of this about how to avoid this situation, but if you really want to know how to do this google for “Pushing the Limits of Windows - Mark Russinovich”. I mostly tweak only “desktop heap memory” limit to allow this, yet not remembering very well, maybe also other things. And of course Flash plugin must be set in "Click to play mode" (read about how to do this in embedded help of this extension). One more invaluable skill - is to be able analyse which tabs consume all the CPU.... Setting up AdBlock might also help, as modern HTML5 rich media advertising really go out of control sometimes in own resources consumption.
But users with a more normal 5-15 tabs count found this extension indispensable also - see the reviews!
I mention my digits just for a record, so you will know the roots of this stuff. As this is the tool which was an ultimate weapon to win the really tough warfare - for people with the too many tabs affliction, who regularly bloated browsers with dozens of open tabs, this is simply a lifesaver.
= FEATURES =
☀ Ultimate Overview - for all of your open, and not so open (read further), browser windows and tabs, in a resizable vertical side view, with a Tree Style Tab feature.
☀ A KILLER FEATURE - it has the unique ability to close and preserve “in place” any tab or window, without removing them from the original context in the tree. Then, if needed, reopen them in the same way you select already open windows or tabs.
This is a real innovation in Web browser usability. It diminishes the cognitive distinction between closed-preserved and open tabs. Therefore, there will be no substantial difference between closed or open tabs, and because of this, there will be no desire to keep them all open anymore!!!
For me, this became the biggest and most useful invention since Web browsers adopted tabbed browsing.
Actually, we are keeping tabs open most of the time not because we need them continuously, but because we want them to stay open to remind us about something unfinished, or about some thought related to them. Yet, taking into account very low default observability for such tabs, this is very ineffective.
However, the bad observability is not the worst problem; a much bigger problem is that all of these open tabs consume A LOT of RAM and CPU (plus often NETWORK BANDWIDTH) resources of a PC — sometimes, ALL OF THEM! I have a six core PC with 16GB of RAM, and in the past most of these resources were constantly consumed by open tabs. Now, with the help of this extension, it really feels like an absolutely new PC from a new era! No SSD, additional 10 CPU cores, or 100GB of RAM will give you this feeling if you happen to have the habit of leaving tabs open continually. In time, they tend to consume all available resources, and for some of us, it’s a very severe problem.
☀ Innovative Tabs Outlining And Organizing Features – you will be able to annotate windows and tabs, add comments to them, notes, a summary of main ideas, to-do items. Organize all of this in logical hierarchies and delimited groups; freely reorder to specify priority or importance.
The innovation is in fact that you will be able to do this not only with somewhere saved links - but with open tabs and windows!
☀ Crash Resistance and Restore Feature Done Right - no more hassles after browser crash or sudden system restart. You will not be forced into an all or nothing choice. This extension makes it possible to reopen only windows you need NOW, or even some individual tabs inside them, without losing others. They will be available to reopen anytime you decide, and in the same context and place where they crashed.
It feels so natural that, actually, you will not think about reopening crashed tabs as a special operation.
If you already use some session saving extension, then you know that actually, because of associated hassles, you very rarely reopen these, buried in some separate lists, crashed sessions. Now, all crashed windows and tabs will be available to review and easily clean in the original context, without consuming any resources, along with new tabs, as if you simply continue your session without any crash.
In addition, there will be fewer crashes now, because often crashes are the result of consuming all of your resources by hundreds of open tabs. So, naturally, when Chrome proposed to restore all of them again, after a crash, or PC restart, you were forced to make a choice — lose all these “remind me of something” tabs, or have again a completely unresponsive PC — no more need for such tough decisions! All of your content will be preserved after a crash or sudden PC restart, and this will not require complete reopening of all crashed tabs.
☀ A Liberation For Your Bookmarks Collections - will help liberate your bookmarks from continuous pollution by closed-for-later sites. Therefore, bookmarks will be used for what they are intended to do, and for what they were invented for — quickly reopen sets of regularly visited pages, instead of serving as a badly organized dump for tabs, which you urgently closed for some reason in the past.
☀ Tabs Lists Exporter - easily export and share the annotated list of your tabs through GoogleDoc, Word, Evernote or many other programs. Hierarchies of windows can be exported simple by drag and drop. Or save your full collection as a standard, clean, HTML file (by Ctrl-S in the main window).
☀ One Click Procrastination Stopper - this tool can break the procrastination chain of continuous Net surfing.
Often, you cannot simply close all of your tabs and start your work because you have a feeling that you might lose something - not just the tabs but also your context and environment. Therefore, they stay active, and distract your attention from your work, and highly increase the possibility of another e-break and cyberslacking. This messy browsing session actually becomes a minefield of distraction.
This extension has a quick cure for this — a button to close all active tabs, but leave links to them in tree, and in the original context, with a possibility to restore everything anytime you wish. You will be able to stop your Net procrastination in one click!
Then, often, you will find, that you actually do not even want, or need to reopen all of these, formerly tempting tabs. They were tempting only because you had more important work.
This is also sure way to quickly close all of your windows in case your boss comes into the room (a boss, behind your shoulders, is also very good cure for procrastinators, maybe even best ; ) so this extension can serve as some sort of panic button.
= Epilogue : ) =
I actually do not know any analogs to this solution; it is unique. And all who continue to use Firefox because of side view for tabs, or because of legendary Tree Style Tab add-on, now you can switch to Chrome. And with big bonuses — much better overview for all open windows, and the ability to unload any tab or window yet retain them in the original context. With a possibility to annotate, manage and reopen all of them further ( reopening closed tabs is actually rarely needed, the title is often completely sufficient to refresh your memory of everything associated within them.
Most people keep tabs open as "todo" items or "reminders", or to “read it later”, not out of an actual desire to have the tab loaded, so this will allow you to seriously reduce open tabs count if you have this problem).
= FAQ =
Q: Does this extension send URLs we access somewhere?
A: NO!
Q: Does this force a particular organization on our tabs in someway? Is this useful only as some organizer?
A: No. It is possible, and some users even use it this way, but for tab addicts it is impractical to be in any way forced to organize the raw stream of tabs - the stream is simply too big. This is why all classic session savers are actually not very practical for really heavy weight tabiters, because they force to operate windows and tabs in sets. And as so, before saving the set, you are forced to have all the tabs opened and in RAM to collect the set. This extension, despite the name and the fact it has powerful organizational capabilities, and plans to include more of this (like tags), does not really force you to organize anything - the main aim and idea is to be super effective in serving and managing unorganized raw tabs torrent. So you will be not forced to collect some set of open tabs in memory only to bury it later in some hidden lists of session saver forever, after one of the browser crashes. You will be able to gradually close-save older tabs. It is more like your browsing workbook, not some sort of tabs catalog with a grand scheme, or periodic snapshots of your working session. Yet of course it is possible to mimic all the capabilities of the classic session savers in it.
Q: Can this save tab back button history?
A: No. Unfortunately, due to Chrome limitations, extensions cannot restore the history of reopened tabs.
= Second Epilogue ; ) =
Installation of this extension does not require restart. It will not change default browser behavior. Special attention was given to keep it CPU and RAM friendly. It does not send private data anywhere or even access it
One thing really worth emphasizing, as it is for some reason very underrated and undervalued by general public:
☆☆☆☆☆
THIS EXTENSION DOES NOT DECLARE THE "ACCESS YOUR DATA ON ALL WEBSITES" RIGHT!
☆☆☆☆☆
Unlike many many others. There really are a lot of reasons why such broad access rights is a bad thing. But let's leave aside really serious privacy and security considerations (like the fact that by hacking the developer's account the hacker can gain control on all your accounts and data, through the extensions autoupdate feature). There is some real problem - such access rights have their own price in terms of browser performance, stability and resources consumption, as in general, extensions that declare such rights inject additional special content scripts in all your tabs, a huge NO NO for any tab addict, with hundreds of tabs.
So, add Tabs Outliner to Chrome confidently, I am sure, this will give you never before seen control over all of your Chrome windows, and improve your everyday browsing experience. This is one of the best Chrome productivity tools and it really helps keep track of all of your browsing activity, it does not matter if you have 10 or 1000 open tabs regularly.
But note, simply installing is not enough, start using it! This extension looks complex, but it can be effectively used completely without all the buttons in the bottom, these buttons can be learned much later. Many of them actually become important only if, and after, you will collect several thousands nodes in your tree.
Don't forget to Rate 5 ☆ ! ; ) Thanks!
My contact information: [email protected]
= Want more? - ok, a bonus section =
Some unedited screenshots and nice pictures if you write an article or blog post and need one:
http://imgur.com/HkTGWJT
http://imgur.com/o8ZvIDH
http://imgur.com/UgwzDbh
http://imgur.com/TXGUm0r
= Changelog (sort of) =
There was a lot of releases since the first one (about forty). But they are mostly bug fixes, support fixes because of changes in Chrome (sometime very huge), documentation tweaks and so on.
Will list only the most important changes which you might miss:
- The marked windows is now treated differently on close, see the updated quick start section (they become saved with all the tabs if contains any notes or marks).
- The long annoying bug with crashed window labels is now fixed. For all who utilize this “bug” to actually restore windows from last closed session i recommend to use the “Recently closed list” - it’s the Chrome feature, can be found in the bottom right corner of the every new tab. This list contain recently closed windows, including the ones that was closed in last session, so unmarked windows can be restored from it (marked will stay in tree anyway), also it is handy to restore accidentally deleted in TO windows.
- The storage engine become much more robust and can handle really bad Chrome profile data corruptions (which unfortunately really happens in the wild). Also saving of the changes done immediately before TO and Chrome complete close is much more sturdy now.
- Added more options to configure appearance, position and colors (especially useful for problematic TN screens).
- There is now possible to turn off automatic scroll (see the options) for main view.
- Tree Style Tabs feature is now on by default for all new users and it is really recommended to enable it for all who install this thing in times when this option was not so recommended to use.
P.S. As for outliner features, this is a beta preview. There is a lot of room to improve. For example, in future versions, it will be possible to add icons to nodes, along with other marks, and create independent trees in new documents. A more convenient way to add and edit notes in place will be added, possibility to rename windows and tabs, full keyboard support for editing and navigating inside the tree, multi-select, undo/redo, remote view to access your sessions from mobiles and other PCs (I will never force you to send your private browsing session data somewhere to the cloud - this feature will be optional, and/or encrypted on the client). And more.
P.P.S. To be able to have up to the 1000 open tabs you need to fine-tune your OS. All of this about how to avoid this situation, but if you really want to know how to do this google for “Pushing the Limits of Windows - Mark Russinovich”. I mostly tweak only “desktop heap memory” limit to allow this, yet not remembering very well, maybe also other things. And of course Flash plugin must be set in "Click to play mode" (read about how to do this in embedded help of this extension). One more invaluable skill - is to be able analyse which tabs consume all the CPU.... Setting up AdBlock might also help, as modern HTML5 rich media advertising really go out of control sometimes in own resources consumption.
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