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billbenson
08-16-2008, 02:05 PM
This was a post I started based on the quote below from a different thread, but I thought it would make a good new thread:

Tabs are great. For anyone that doesn't use them, when I reboot my computer I first open my email program so it appears on the bottom left of my screen. I then open notepad (actually I use editpad, but its the same sort of thing). When a customer calls I always take notes in edit pad. Then I open a FireFox instance in that I open tabs for forums, cnn, non work related stuff.Then I open and instance of FireFox for web design related stuff. After that I open a firefox instance for sales related stuff. After that it becomes pretty random. By the end of the day I usually have the bottom littered with stuff open, but when I take a break for a minute I know the first ff has forums and news, second one is web design, and the third one is sales.

It would be nice to be able to close everything and reboot every night but I usually can't . I may have several quotes open that I am waiting for the customer to call me with a credit card for example. Eventually I will have to, because I have an older computer and not that much ram. After about 3 days the computer will freeze.

When I do reboot, I make sure I have saved anything important and close any unimportant tabs manually. I may have an article open i want to read but haven't gotten to yet. I leave that open. I then click on the first firefox tab and then reboot.

When the computer comes back up, I reopen my email and editpad. Then I click on the firefox icon. It will say restore sessions. Click on "restore sessions" and it will reopen all of my firefox instances and all of my tabs with one click.

Note that when I did the restart, I first clicked on the left most firefox instance first. Thats required to open all the tabs in the same order.

Everything comes back up in the same order. The article I wanted to read is there. I bounce back to forums or the news throughout the day when I want to take a 5 min break. Helps keep me organized.




I do exactly the same thing, vangogh, I usually leave a tab for this forum open all day and check back regularly. I used to just keep using the bookmark, but with issues I was having before, I got used to the tab approach even though I'm not having the issues any more.

Spider
08-16-2008, 04:42 PM
Funny - I remember some tabs when I bought this computer with new operating system, wondered what they were, tried them, thought "What a waste of time!," found a way to turn them off and haven't seen them since.

How nice it is that we can all adapt our computers to work the way we want them to.

cbscreative
08-16-2008, 05:41 PM
I've used browser tabs for a long time, I just never kept the SBF open all day until this change (being an admin is additional motivation though). I have a small home office like you, bill, but I usually shut down the computers in it each night. Strangely enough, my oldest computer down in the basement that I mentioned in another thread, is left on all the time even though it's Win98 which is less stable when left on too long. It needs to be rebooted on occasion, but the biggest reason to leave it on is so no one has to go start it up if something on it is needed over the network. It gets used most days anyway.

My office computers are XP, so they boot up very quickly. I leave my Vista laptop on too, just let it go to sleep mode because it takes so long to boot up, but recovers quickly from sleep mode.

Like you, I have a lot of stuff open on my computer most of the time, but the XP Pro on the one I use handles it well. I use classic settings on mine which gives it a performance boost. It could probably handle it anyway, but I prefer to have the resources dedicated to performance rather than eye candy.

orion_joel
08-17-2008, 12:20 AM
I have been using tab's for quite some time as well, but have stuck with firefox, not really wanting to even try tabbed browsing in IE7. I have no real method to my use of tabs other then for forums i will open use forum from the main site in a new tab so i always know which topics i have not read, before the forum resets the new post thing. If that makes sense.

Also when working on different things i may do some searching and whenever i find something i want to read will open a new tab until i have finished the main searching then i will start doing the reading.

I did find one good feature in Firefox, if you have a range of sites that you usually visit together and often, once you have them all opened you can bookmark all the tabs at once into a single folder on Favorites. Then when you want to visit them again, you can open all favorites in that folder at once. Found this good for checking site stats and such i can open the awstats for each of my 5 domains at one time, or the analytics reports for each. Without having to type one single domain name in.

billbenson
08-17-2008, 02:31 AM
Ya, that bookmarking feature is pretty cool.

Spider if you find the bottom of your screen littered with ff or ie instances, its time to look into tabs. I would have 50 instances of FF or IE open on a friday if it wasn't for tabs. If you open something, do it, and close it; there is very little benefit. I bet that if you started using them, though, you might find a more efficient way of working.

Spider
08-17-2008, 09:58 AM
Call me old-fashioned. I have no desire to try and work on 50 things at the same time - not even sure I'm capable of that. One thing at a time has always worked fine. A couple of 'assistant' windows and I'm set. I know where things are and can open any closed window at a click so there's no point for me to keep something open that I will refer to again. I also pop in and out of SBF and 2 other forum, but I fnd no need to keep them open all the time - closing and opening them takes no longer than hiding and exposing them.

orion_joel
08-17-2008, 12:12 PM
A good example of tabbed browsing can help in forums is right now i have 6 tabs open each one has one of the forums at SBF open that i want to check before leaving the site. helps me stay focused where i am going and not get confused with where i have been.

Spider
08-17-2008, 05:35 PM
A good example of tabbed browsing can help in forums is right now i have 6 tabs open each one has one of the forums at SBF open that i want to check before leaving the site. helps me stay focused where i am going and not get confused with where i have been.Sorry to say, but that is proof enough for me that we really do have too many forum. But we have been down that path before and I don't mean to take us down that way again!

orion_joel
08-17-2008, 11:56 PM
Hmm, i dont see how that means to many forums, weather there was 5 or 50 forums i would do exactly the same thing. Although i would probably be just picking out the ones that really interested me if there was 50.

billbenson
08-18-2008, 11:38 AM
I have about 3 or four forums up. This one, a webmaster forum, a seo forum, and a second webmaster forum. I also have an article I still haven't read up, cnn, and a hurricane update as it looks like a hurricane is going to hit is tomorrow. Half way through writing this I got a call for a quote and an online order. Tabs make it really easy to plop back and fourth.

orion_joel
08-19-2008, 01:29 AM
That was exactly what got me interested in the tabs to start with Bill, I used to end up with my start bar looking like a dotted line, and then i would open a link in an email and it would open over the top of something else. Now i have 2 at most 3 firefox windows and new links open in new tabs rather then the last active window or tab.