For me, the workspaces are actually a plus. It makes me think about the grouping of my windows. I usually have workspace for web browsing, another for IDE with possible terminal window and long running tasks or servers on the highest available workspace number, so it doesn't get in my way.
I end up having two virtual desktops for the same thing.
I3 has tabs, but I find tabs very awkward. their names get mangled "H[V[...]]", and half the time when I rearrange windows I end up just killing and relaunching them.
