Forum Discussion
Discussion - Set Aside Tabs and Warn on Close
Elliot Kirk Set Aside Tabs was my most loved and most used feature in old Edge. I'm a software developer. I'm working on a JIRA ticket so I have that open plus maybe my Kanban board and gradually I open a bunch more tabs while I'm working on that ticket. Then I need to break from that and maybe do email for a while, or work on some higher priority issue. Click the Set Tabs Aside button, start work on the new task, opening tabs as needed. Either I complete that task and close tabs I'm done with, or I need to context switch again and Set Tabs Aside, go to the vertical menu showing timestamps, thumbnails horizontally, click Restore Tabs for the task I want to work on and I'm straight back to it.
Things I really liked:
- No requirement to name the tab group
- All open tabs are set aside with a single click
- Easy to read the vertical sidebar of previously set aside tabs -- easy to skim quickly by date, easy to scroll left/right if needed to see more of a set
- Easy to restore an entire context with a single click and -- this is critically important -- have it disappear from the saved list of contexts!
- Easy to edit previously set aside tabs to remove items I no longer need/care about
The position of the menu and the set aside button made sense, off to the top left, away from the "permanent" controls like favorites and history. As noted above, the transient nature of the tab groups was a critical part of the usefulness: no naming, no need to go back and remove a context after restoring it (and completing the task).
Was there any aspect of set tabs aside I didn't like? Nope. It did exactly what I wanted.
What about Collections? To me, it's a completely useless feature. It implements a workflow I just don't need and it implements it in a way that doesn't match how I use the web at all. I've tried to use it a couple of times since it appeared but it's cumbersome and ugly and I just plain old dislike the entire user experience and user interface for it. Maybe "consumers" like it (my wife's a "consumer" and she doesn't like it either) but this technical user doesn't like it at all.
Could you use Collections as a way to implement Set Tabs Aside without driving me insane? Maybe. The prerequisites would be:
- There must be a single click in the UI -- without digging into menus -- that saves all the currently open tabs to an auto-named-by-date collection and closes those tabs!
- In the Collections menu, such groups would need to easily readable (thumbnails, partial URLs, scrollable so all tabs can be seen -- none of which seems to happen with collections right now).
- In the Collections menu, there would need to be a single click button to open/restore those tabs (no, not a right-click & then a second click) -- and the collection would need to be deleted once the tabs are restored.
Right now, Collections fails on every bullet point, and in multiple ways for each of those.
Sean, you captured my thoughts precisely! I've been in a bit of a hurry every time I try to get my thoughts on "paper," as it were. I'm not sure if you're saying you don't want or need the ability to name your set aside tabs groups, but I would like to have that option: it's not a deal breaker, but I'd like that.
Anyway, good job with your post.
Regards,
Dan
Dan_AI4GK I wouldn't object to having the option to name groups of set-aside tabs, but given that tab groups are deleted from the sidebar when they are restored, I'm not convinced there's really much value in names -- since they'd "evaporate" any time you restored a tab group.
And if you say "Oh, but the browser could remember and reuse the name if you set aside tabs that came from a named group!", I'll offer these scenarios:
- Set Tabs Aside, name them Fred. Open three tabs, restore Fred. Now you have a mix of Fred tabs and non-Fred tabs. If you set them aside now, what happens?
- Set Tabs Aside, name them Fred. Continue working and Set Tabs Aside again and name this new group Joe. Now restore Fred and also restore Joe. Now you have a mix of Fred tabs and Joe tabs. If you set them aside now, what happens?
seancorfield If there would be an option to keep a tab group after reopening (which I would really love to see, as an option), I would expect/prefer the feature to behave like this in your scenarios:
- By default, pressing Set Tabs Aside would create a new group (single click, no hassle, default behavior).
- Alternatively, I want to have an option to add all open tabs (or single open tab) to an existing group, named or not. Then I would expect all open tabs would be simply added, with removing duplicates.
Set Tabs Aside, name them Fred. Continue working and Set Tabs Aside again and name this new group Joe. Now restore Fred and also restore Joe. Now you have a mix of Fred tabs and Joe tabs. If you set them aside now, what happens?Ummmm... Mayhem?
I do see your point. You would learn very quickly to keep your set-aside tabs pristine. There could be a warning that you have added new tabs; did you want to do that? Like I said, I could live with not naming set-aside tabs; just for my purposes it would help.Regards,
Dan
