I am intrigued, though, how well the browsing history concept scales up to dozens of tabs. In my experience, I only use the newest tab on mobile, while the other open tabs become some kind of living bookmarks.
I kind of like your project just for the simple goal of not hiding complexity. As it is through hiding complexity that we get products whose minds we can not read.
As your approach is "Browser as IDE", have you thought of.. actually putting tabs next to tabs, inside of the main window?
Like Jupyter Notebook, but for websites?
After all, we all mostly do research and there is an action that springs out of our browsing activity. If that action is 'writing stuff down', why not do it directly in the browser?
The idea was less "browser as an IDE" and more "browser GUI like an IDE's GUI" meaning maximize organization and quick context switching in lieu of hiding everything. Granted IDEs often have tabs on top too, I just chose not to.
While I update it to newer Chromium versions regularly and use it as my main browser with great success, the lack of community interest in the project limits my desire to put much work in to new features unless I really want them.
This article and the idea of tab history solidify an approach that I have always taken to browsing that I've dubbed "immutable browsing". I ctrl+click every link to make a child and only purge the roots of the tree to roll up the children when the roots habe no value to me anymore. On a Wikipedia or Github project spelunking expedition, I can get many levels deep, sometimes ctrl+clicking dozens of pages as background child pages from a single page.
You should check out Workona's workspaces. We've built some of what you've mentioned as a Chrome extension backed by a web app.
Our workspaces (persistent windows with names) remember your tabs automatically, are multiuser/collaborative, and even have a URL (like any good web object). You can also access your workspaces on multiple computers, so you can start a project at work and finish it at home.
We're officially launching out of beta next month, but you can sign up now if you're interested:
Just tried it -- this is a great idea. Unfortunately, I can't use it because Workona spaces don't "containerize" accounts I'm logged into.
For example, I need multiple spaces where each space is "dedicated" to a single Google account -- it has multiple tabs open that are logged into that particular Google account.
I tried to create that setup, but the accounts "leak" between spaces: logging into a Google account in one space doesn't allow tabs in other spaces to be logged into a different Google account.
If you ever implement proper account isolation per space, please notify me: I'd like to be a beta tester.
Glad you like the concept. You're correct that we don't attempt to do account isolation as that isn't the purpose of our workspaces. Our workspaces are meant to be used at the project/meeting/workflow level, not at the Example Inc./Acme Inc./Home level.
As another person suggested, you can use Chrome profiles with Workona installed on each, but that likely isn't what you're after.
> For example, I need multiple spaces where each space is "dedicated" to a single Google account
Could you sign in to chrome in your different google accounts, with an instance of workona per google account? It's not perfect, but might do what you want it to do?
This looks promising. I've tried to adjust some of my workflow around a concept like this using Spaces/Task Switching apps but eventually just fall back to old habits. Will give it a try.
Glad you guys are launching! I tried workona for a week, but couldn't justify switching away from firefox. It seems though, you added a lot of features, maybe it's time to try again..
Does Workona save tabs and their state, or only the URL?
For example, if I'm halfway through filling out a form but switch workspaces, will it lose my progress? Can I have multiple workspaces open in different windows?
It depends. If you are just opening the workspace for the first time, then we will just be loading up the URLs. We do preserve tab state (form data, page scrolled, text selected, etc.) when you switch between workspaces that are already open. That way the tabs don't have to reload as you repeatedly switch contexts.
By default Workona opens workspaces in the same window, but you can command-click (Mac) or control-click (Windows) to open a workspace in a new window.
I am intrigued, though, how well the browsing history concept scales up to dozens of tabs. In my experience, I only use the newest tab on mobile, while the other open tabs become some kind of living bookmarks.