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DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 12:02 AM
Being a regular user of Firefox for all of my surfing activities (On all of my machines, which span a few distros as well) i thought i would pose this simple question to others, to see if i am alone in this or not. :)

I've also decided to poll (for those that like polls & also because i've never done one before & it will be fun & enlightening) so if you feel like taking part then please do.

The question, of course, is.... "How many tabs (on average) do you have open at any one time, in Firefox?".......

I regularly have approximately 20-30 or more, and the most i have had is about 56. But my average is about the 30-40 mark at any given time. I try to keep the count down to a "Sensible" (if there is one) level, but as i surf here & there it just goes up & up & up.... :)

I hardly ever open new FF windows..... just the one, with loads of Tabs. :)

I would be very interested to hear from others (if you can spare the time) with their "Tab Habits" and "Tab Counts" etc?

Thanks for taking the time to read/respond.

DJiNN

Anonii
October 13th, 2006, 12:04 AM
3 or 4, on average.
Right now, 2.

Maximum would be 20~ on image boards.

maniacmusician
October 13th, 2006, 12:05 AM
on a standard basis, two windows, with about 20 tabs total. I don't like more than one row of tabs and if there's too many in one window, it gets cluttered. The most i've ever had was probably five different windows with 10-14 tabs in each. it was a busy week.

ComplexNumber
October 13th, 2006, 12:06 AM
usuallyabout 2 or 3. 4 at a maximum.

DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 12:14 AM
Wow!! Thanks for the quick reply guys!! I've only just popped the question in there & there's already 3 answers, and all pointing to a fairly "Low" Tab count.....!! Hmmm, could i be the only one?

I currenly have about 56 tabs in my FF window at this very moment.... Am i doing something wrong....? Do i need therapy? :mrgreen:

We shall see...... Hopefully there'll be some others that are hitting the high Tab marks..... (Fingers crossed!)

Thing is..... i do try & keep the Tab count down (Honest!) and get rid of the ones that i don't view often, but it just seems to creep right back up again!! (Sigh!) :)

Thanks again for the quick response......

DJiNN

ComplexNumber
October 13th, 2006, 12:21 AM
50 tabs!! are you kiddin'? :mrgreen:. that would take up more memory than they whole of gnome and kde put together :D. i think the poll is wayyyy too unrealistic. there should be about 10 entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 or more.

Wolki
October 13th, 2006, 12:31 AM
I don't use firefox, but I usually have 4-8 tabs open in a window, and then several windows placed strategically over my different workspaces. I used to go all tab-happy with 40 and up, but I pretty much stopped. Tabs become hard to manage when they are so small - you can't see what you have open anymore and are bound to open them again. After a day or two you end up with a monolithic window containing lots of information, some in triplicates, and have to painfully check each one to see whether you still want it...

banjobacon
October 13th, 2006, 12:38 AM
You do realize that most browsers have tabs, right? This is not some sort of feature that is unique to Firefox.

darkhatter
October 13th, 2006, 12:40 AM
41 - 50 :confused: :confused: :confused: I have like 2 - 3at max lol

DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 12:44 AM
50 tabs!! are you kiddin'? :mrgreen:. that would take up more memory than they whole of gnome and kde put together :D. i think the poll is wayyyy too unrealistic. there should be about 10 entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 or more.

Heehee..... i thought about that, having a smaller number, but the point of the poll was to find out if people had "High" numbers or not (Which at this present time "Doesn't" seem to be the case). It does take up quite a bit of Memory, but i've got a gig so it's not too bad (& i'm running a couple of VirtualX desktops (http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/VirtualX) as well, one of which has FF running with quite a few number of tabs)..... :)

here's a screenshot (http://ubuntuforums.org/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=3767&size=big&cat=500) so you can see...... i've slimmed it down a bit & deleted some of the tabs, but you get the idea. :mrgreen:

DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 12:47 AM
I don't use firefox, but I usually have 4-8 tabs open in a window, and then several windows placed strategically over my different workspaces. I used to go all tab-happy with 40 and up, but I pretty much stopped. Tabs become hard to manage when they are so small - you can't see what you have open anymore and are bound to open them again. After a day or two you end up with a monolithic window containing lots of information, some in triplicates, and have to painfully check each one to see whether you still want it...

Very true, & it's something that's hard to get out of..... I tend to go to a lot of sites and hop from one place to another, & when an interesting link pops up, well... up pops another Tab, and so it goes. But you're correct.... it's very messy at times (Although i do find it productive) and i have to be quite mercenary when having a clearout! :)

DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 12:50 AM
You do realize that most browsers have tabs, right? This is not some sort of feature that is unique to Firefox.

Heehee, i sure do.... but as i use FF almost exclusively, i thought i would stick to what i use. There is a reason, and it's to do with the fact that i have noticed that FF, when getting "Tab Heavy", has a tendency to slow down quite a bit (Which makes sense) but also crash quite often.....

Anyway, if there are other browser users out there that do some heavy Tabbing & would like to add their vote, then that's great...... the more the merrier. :)

DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 12:52 AM
41 - 50 :confused: :confused: :confused: I have like 2 - 3at max lol

:mrgreen: Well, it looks like i'm kind of sailing alone here at the moment (Although i did notice one vote that was up in the 50's, so "Yayy" to that person!)..... I just find it hard to limit myself to a few, and whenever i do, it just starts to creep back up again..... :)

Not the man I once was
October 13th, 2006, 01:04 AM
Greetings All,

On a day to day basis I on average have 20 Tabs open at any one time, the majority being Google Services and suchlike, my Web Hosting Provider Heart Internet, and of course the Ubuntu Web site and the Ubuntu Forums. Naturally. Tabbed browsing and indeed all manner of tabbed applications has become extremely important to my day to day Online activities, be it Instant Messaging within Gaim or Web Browsing within Mozilla Firefox, it's indispensible.
My only wish is that i could scroll my mouse wheel and browse Web Pages a la the Taskbar within the GNOME and KDE Desktop Enviroments. It's an excellent feature for applications and its simplicity alone gets attention from those running Microsoft Windows! Sadly it's not a feature within Mozilla Firefox 2.

:(

Regards,

Not the man I once was

%hMa@?b<C
October 13th, 2006, 02:16 AM
I usually have 5-6 mainly due to my small 1024x768 monitor. I would have more, but then I couldnt read them.

Rhapsody
October 13th, 2006, 02:27 AM
Hard to say for me, since the number fluctuates a lot, but I guessed at 21-30. I can fairly easily get past 50 on imageboards and the sort, and my maximum would be over (and I'm not kidding here) 100 tabs.

Understandably, tab behavior is something very important to me. For a long time, I used Tabbrowser Extensions, but I'm now using Tab Mix Plus instead. After using Tabbrowser Extensions for such a long time, it's amusing to see people call Tab Mix Plus (which is positively spartan by comparision) bloated.

Anduu
October 13th, 2006, 04:55 AM
I have 3 tabs open right now...the forum main page,Ubuntu cafe and this thread.

Basically I just use tabs to keep from getting "lost" on the net...if a link takes me away from the site I am browsing I use a new tab so the original page is easy to get back to.When I am done reading a page the tab gets closed.

What is the point of having a zillion tabs open all the time...isn't that what bookmarks are for?

slimdog360
October 13th, 2006, 05:17 AM
usually around 4 or 5, but if Im researching something could be 15-20.

towsonu2003
October 13th, 2006, 06:40 AM
what kind of system do you people have? firefox (no, swiftfox) does a couple of numbers on me when I go 15+ tabs... and this is a 1gb ram, 2.80ghz laptop.

I cannot imagine myself with 50+ tabs. no I can: hard reset.

Rui Pais
October 13th, 2006, 07:30 AM
here's a screenshot (http://ubuntuforums.org/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=3767&size=big&cat=500) so you can see...... i've slimmed it down a bit & deleted some of the tabs, but you get the idea. :mrgreen:

my god, why do that? you can't even read whats on which tab?!
(btw opera have mini-thumbs - that appears when you hoover over a tab - for that occasions, a feature that i would be available for ff...)

If you have so many because you are lazy on close them do you know that either Ctrl+w or click with mouse middle button on any tab will close it without leave the your actual opened tab?

FISHERMAN
October 13th, 2006, 08:18 AM
I usually stay have between 20-30 tabs open.

Kateikyoushi
October 13th, 2006, 09:05 AM
Usually less than 10 maximum 10-20 but I do not use the tab bar just ctrl+tab so that's a pain to use.
Since I use rss reader I need less tabs.

argie
October 13th, 2006, 09:12 AM
Upto 35 for this computer. Only 4 for the other one.

Actually, lately I just have 10-12 tabs open.

DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 11:08 AM
Hard to say for me, since the number fluctuates a lot, but I guessed at 21-30. I can fairly easily get past 50 on imageboards and the sort, and my maximum would be over (and I'm not kidding here) 100 tabs.

Understandably, tab behavior is something very important to me. For a long time, I used Tabbrowser Extensions, but I'm now using Tab Mix Plus instead. After using Tabbrowser Extensions for such a long time, it's amusing to see people call Tab Mix Plus (which is positively spartan by comparision) bloated.

Hey Rhapsody, thanks for the info. Good to see someone else is in the "High Tab Bracket" & i'm not the only one.... (Phew!) :)

I use Tab Mix Plus here & don't think it's bloated at all..... there are a lot of options for sure, but surely that's better than not having those options in the first place? Maybe the author could think about producing a "Lite" version of TMB? :-D

I can't say as i've ever hit the 100 Tabs mark, but i can see how that that could happen. I regularly have somewhere in the region of 40, and quite often it's between 50-60, but i usually start deleting stuff that i haven't gone to in a few days when it starts to reach that number, otherwise it starts getting out of hand. :)

Rui Pais
October 13th, 2006, 11:19 AM
I use Tab Mix Plus here & don't think it's bloated at all.....

The question is not bloat, but memory leaks.
Firefox has several know problems, bad ones in fact, with memory leaks, and things like keep a window open for several hours or open a lot of tabs could easily lead to an almost frozen box.

Seems that most of those problem are solved on FF2 (at least with me it ever frozen yet with intense use).

DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 11:45 AM
I have 3 tabs open right now...the forum main page,Ubuntu cafe and this thread.

Basically I just use tabs to keep from getting "lost" on the net...if a link takes me away from the site I am browsing I use a new tab so the original page is easy to get back to.When I am done reading a page the tab gets closed.

What is the point of having a zillion tabs open all the time...isn't that what bookmarks are for?

Hi Anduu, thanks for the reply.

Indeed, i guess that you could say that this is what bookmarks are for, but have you ever got to the point where you've collected so many bookmarks because something looks interesting, then found that you've never gone back to parhaps 50% of the sites that you marked, but all those bookmarks are stacked all over the place & it starts to become a real mess trying to find anything?

That used to happen to me all the time, and my Bookmarks folder was chaos (& still is to some extent) so i started using both Social Bookmarking (De.licio.us) & Tabbing. The idea being that if you find an interesting site whilst surfing, you open in a new Tab to go back later & have a look etc, but at least while the Tab is open there's a chance that you'll look at the page. Once something's bookmarked, it (more often than not) just gets forgotten, especially if it was just a page or site that you thought was "Interesting enough to check out".

Bookmarks are great, but they have their limits, as does the Tabbing system. neither is perfect, but using the strengths of both combined with whatever your personal surfing habits are, certainly works for me at the moment. :)

DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 11:50 AM
usually around 4 or 5, but if Im researching something could be 15-20.

Hi slimdog, thanks for the input.

That's interesting you say that, because more often than not, i'm "Researching" something..... i very rarely just "Surf" for the heck of it. Maybe that's why the Tab count is so high..... i've pretty much always got a reason for surfing, although i do get sidetracked by "Interesting" sites along the way, which ALWAYS bumps up the Tab count a little bit more. :mrgreen:

DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 11:52 AM
what kind of system do you people have? firefox (no, swiftfox) does a couple of numbers on me when I go 15+ tabs... and this is a 1gb ram, 2.80ghz laptop.

I cannot imagine myself with 50+ tabs. no I can: hard reset.

Heehee.... this is one of the reasons that i asked the question in the first place, because i have found with a High Tab Count that after a while (Usually no more than a day or two) the system needs a reset, or at least logging out & back in again (Which is not so bad) and this is not a high power system.... just an old 2.4ghz P4 (400 fsb) with a gig of ram.

DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 12:07 PM
my god, why do that? you can't even read whats on which tab?!
(btw opera have mini-thumbs - that appears when you hoover over a tab - for that occasions, a feature that i would be available for ff...)

If you have so many because you are lazy on close them do you know that either Ctrl+w or click with mouse middle button on any tab will close it without leave the your actual opened tab?

Hi Rui Pais, thanks for the reply.

I don't really see that i need to read what's on each tab, as i'm the one that opened the tab in the first place, and every tab has an icon (well, some don't, but most do) so i just use the icons to find the page that i'm looking for. I also "Group" the tabs together, so for instance all the Ubuntu Forum Tabs are grouped, making it easier to get to a page quicker.

It's nothing to do with laziness, rather more to do with "Speed & efficiency", for me anyway. I do have a clearout every few days & get rid of tabs that i haven't visited or no longer need, and on occassion i save the whole groub of Tabs to a bookmark folder because there are places that i didn't get to go, and don't have time at the moment, but would perhaps like to look at some time in the future. :)

The funny thing is, i very rarely go back & look once they're saved as bookmarks. I find the whole bookmarking thing very slow & not very user friendly...... unless bookmarks are saved in some kind of hierarchical folder system, they become very messy very qucikly. :)

DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 12:10 PM
I usually stay have between 20-30 tabs open.

Aha.... another "Higher than average" Tab user..... nice one! :D

DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 12:15 PM
The question is not bloat, but memory leaks.
Firefox has several know problems, bad ones in fact, with memory leaks, and things like keep a window open for several hours or open a lot of tabs could easily lead to an almost frozen box.

Seems that most of those problem are solved on FF2 (at least with me it ever frozen yet with intense use).

I thought it may be memory leaks. For quite some time now, i have had to logoff & log back on at least once a day, otherwise after a few days at the most, the system gets really slow & sluggish.

I haven't tried FF2 yet, but i'm almost tempted to try, especially if it'll cure this problem. (Although i'm sure that it'll bring up others in the process) :)

Did you find FF2 easy to install? And are you using Dapper or Edgy?

Rui Pais
October 13th, 2006, 12:39 PM
I thought it may be memory leaks. For quite some time now, i have had to logoff & log back on at least once a day, otherwise after a few days at the most, the system gets really slow & sluggish.

I haven't tried FF2 yet, but i'm almost tempted to try, especially if it'll cure this problem. (Although i'm sure that it'll bring up others in the process) :)

Did you find FF2 easy to install? And are you using Dapper or Edgy?

Well i understand your open-tab/bookmarks. Bookmarks is one of those things excellent in concept but highly colliding with human nature ;)
Again opera has something cool, a vertical frame (like old bookmarks frame on mozilla) that can he snapped in/out to/from the browser margin. It can have bookmarks, links, history, whatever you want.

Don't worry about ff2 bring up other problems... ff1 should never be numbered 1. 2 will be the really first stable. Any rc as been far more stable then any previous stable on 1 series. And much faster.

Install is boring. Just download the Linux version from firefox size, untar to some place on your disc and you can run it from there (no need to uninstall your actual one).
If you liked you can check these forum on how to replace ubuntu firefox with ff2 (plenty of threads on that) or simply make a launcher on menu or desktop...

Most extensions will not work yet, like session savers, but ff2 comes with a Session Saver build-in :)

DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 01:00 PM
Well i understand your open-tab/bookmarks. Bookmarks is one of those things excellent in concept but highly colliding with human nature ;)
Again opera has something cool, a vertical frame (like old bookmarks frame on mozilla) that can he snapped in/out to/from the browser margin. It can have bookmarks, links, history, whatever you want.

I've tried Opera from time to time, and really liked it, but i keep going back to Firefox for various reasons. Opera seems a lot more stable though.


Install is boring. Just download the Linux version from firefox size, untar to some place on your disc and you can run it from there (no need to uninstall your actual one).

Aha, i think i'll give it a try then. Even better that i can run it alongside the version that i'm using now, just in case it doesn't work quite how i expect it to.


If you liked you can check these forum on how to replace ubuntu firefox with ff2 (plenty of threads on that) or simply make a launcher on menu or desktop...

Thanks, i'll give that a go.


Most extensions will not work yet, like session savers, but ff2 comes with a Session Saver build-in :)

Hmmm, that could be a problem. I do use the Session Saver of Tab Mix Plus, but i also use many other extensions as well, such as Forecast Fox, Scrapbook, FireFTP etc etc, and although i'm sure that i could do without them, i'd rather use them than not. But i'll give it a look anyway. :)

fuscia
October 13th, 2006, 01:02 PM
when i get to six, or seven, i start to panic and have to shut some of them.

PingunZ
October 13th, 2006, 01:08 PM
1 - 20 here :)
Usually 5 - 10 tabs

Cheers

DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 02:20 PM
when i get to six, or seven, i start to panic and have to shut some of them.

:D I only start to panic when i'm topping the 40-50 mark and things are slowing down somewhat. :)

DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 02:25 PM
Well, this is really informative. It's not even been going for 24 hours yet, but the results have been great, showing, so far, that most people are of the 1-10 Tabs kind, with a few approaching the 20 Tabs count. It curves quite sharply from thereon, with only a very small number using 30 tabs & upwards. :)

Early days i know, but very interesting, and thanks to all those that have voted & joined in the topic. It'll be very interesting to see if it's still the same (Relatively of course) after a week or two. :D

coder_
October 13th, 2006, 02:26 PM
I actually tend to have around 40-50 when I'm researching something, like a new programming language. I find it off of a blog and click each link on each page to get as much info as I can get :P

Chemroydal Tissue
October 13th, 2006, 02:35 PM
Depends what I'm doing. For normal surfing, less than 10 (my answer). For research, or when I haven't checked the news in a couple of days it could be dozens.

henriquemaia
October 13th, 2006, 02:42 PM
I use up to 10 or so. Everytime I need more (for whatever reason), I open a new window. I hate to see the tab bar all cluttered.

Gargamella
October 13th, 2006, 06:06 PM
3 or 4 on average it is a great feature for a browser (internet explorer on xp hasn't got it )

Woobles
October 13th, 2006, 06:18 PM
I normally have up to 5/6 tabs open at one time - but then after that, I normally accidently close tabs as I'm very clumsy with the mouse :lol:

DJiNN
October 13th, 2006, 08:14 PM
I use up to 10 or so. Everytime I need more (for whatever reason), I open a new window. I hate to see the tab bar all cluttered.

I see what you mean, and agree that it can be rather horrible to look at all those small tabs etc. I keep meaning to try multiple windows with say 10-15 tabs in each, or maybe even grouped (Like one window for ebay, one for the ubuntu forums, one for reading the news etc) but just haven't got around to it yet..... It's just so much easier to have it all in one window with loads of Tabs. :)

PriceChild
October 13th, 2006, 08:20 PM
Just over a dozen trying to keep track of things on the forum...

BWF89
October 13th, 2006, 09:15 PM
01-10 -- Low & sleek.

GameManK
October 13th, 2006, 10:34 PM
I don't use firefox, but I have almost 30 open in opera and a few in konqueror. Since both store your session, I tend to just keep pages open instead of bookmarking them.

DJiNN
October 14th, 2006, 01:55 AM
I don't use firefox, but I have almost 30 open in opera and a few in konqueror. Since both store your session, I tend to just keep pages open instead of bookmarking them.

I keep meaning to give Opera more useage than i have, but i'm so geared up for Firefox (With extensions etc) that i never seem to get round to it. :) You're right about the Sessions..... since you can just store each session, why bother closing pages until you need/want to? :)

DJiNN
October 14th, 2006, 01:57 AM
01-10 -- Low & sleek.

Which seems to be the way that most people use their "Tabs". Thanks for the vote. :)