Rebuilding TBE's featureset with other plugins

d_g · Post by **d_g** » May 30th, 2004, 1:57 am

...that said I have TBE's session managements functions disabled and use Session Saver instead, although that was after bad experiences with a TBE build from months ago. Just never re-tested it.

warehauz · Post by **warehauz** » May 30th, 2004, 10:00 am

d_g wrote:You know, just to defend TBE, I'm no sure where this impression of poor performance comes from.

I love the featureset they've managed to put together with TBE, and I'm certainly not trying to 'diss' the extension or its author or anything like that. I would certainly recommend users try it out, since it is a real convenient one-stop extension for all tabbed browsing needs. If your experience is different than mine, and it's working for you, then great. I plan to periodically re-visit TBE just to see if it works for my needs in the future too. I think it's a YMMV thing here, but there are definately users (like me) that have had problems with TBE and it's performance/stability.

I stress my browser a lot, with a ton of open tabs, fast switching between tabs, typing about a million words per minute, etc. For my usage, TBE just wasn't working out. The primary issue was the poor session management (which is a critical feature for me, as it's how I organize my workflow with open tabs etc). Half the time, saving & restoring tab sessions didn't work - and it never worked properly for me after a crash. I ended up having all these bookmark folders from 'Bookmark this group of tabs' - I'd manually store my tab sessions that way as a manual backup. Still didn't work as good as SessionSaver. And with TBE, after browsing for a few hours it would start to slow to a crawl. Exiting & reloading the browser cleared it up for a little while, but I was always hesitant to do that since there was no good session management.

I also experience fewer crashes now that I've replaced TBE, and while I didn't log CPU usage stats, it appears to be using much less. Interestingly, my average CPU temps (which I do monitor) are about 7 degrees celsius lower now than they were with TBE!!!! Of course, this is on a laptop with poor cooling, so any small changes in CPU usage will pop that CPU temp up, but that's a very noticable change - so obviously my computer is working a lot less now that TBE is out of there.

Again, I understand the author of TBE has put a monumental amount of effort into the extension, and I'm not trying to detract from that in any way. But I've got to go with what works for me, and for now, a dozen or so smaller extensions are working a lot better than TBE (the two noticable shortcomings I mentioned earlier are the only downsides, but aren't big enough to warrant going back to TBE). I recommend all users experiment to see what works best for them - that's the whole advantage of these extensions, we can all make our browser truly OUR browser. I work differently than other people, so my tools should be a bit different.

In the end of the day, use what works. TBE's great in many ways, but doesn't pass that 'use what works' test for me. YMMV (and obviously does).

Viva la FireFox! =)

d_g · Post by **d_g** » May 30th, 2004, 2:48 pm

The primary issue was the poor session management (which is a critical feature for me, as it's how I organize my workflow with open tabs etc). Half the time, saving & restoring tab sessions didn't work - and it never worked properly for me after a crash. I ended up having all these bookmark folders from 'Bookmark this group of tabs' - I'd manually store my tab sessions that way as a manual backup. Still didn't work as good as SessionSaver.

I'd agree whole-heartedly with that, I use Session Saver too.

after browsing for a few hours it would start to slow to a crawl.

I get that, but that's due to the memory leak - my 256mb system runs out of memory after about 20 hours of surfing, so FF needs a re-start to reclaim the memory. Happens with our without TBE for me.

I surf in a similar manner to you - 200+ tabs, lots of opening/closing, also use a laptop (Athon XP-M 1600). One thing I like is TBE's colour-coding of tabs in a group, makes distuingishing between the different topics I'm browsing a cinch.

However I'm typing this on my mum's new computer (a P4 2.8 desktop, niiiice). As an experiment, I've only installed TBP, SS and Clone Window to keep things simple. Actually quite suprised with it. Last time I tried a similar set-up Clone Window couldn't clone tabs, and that was a deal-breaker at the time. However I think I might try the same set-up on my laptop and see if that keeps the memory usage down a bit. Never had a browser crash with TBE though, although I stick to milestone FF releases.

Chiark · Post by **Chiark** » June 1st, 2004, 7:35 am

Is there a way/extension other than right-click & open in new tab/TBE that forces Bookmarks to load in a new tab? I looked at about:config and browser.tabs.opentabfor.bookmarks suggested that function, but setting it to true didn't seem work.

chuonthis · Post by **chuonthis** » June 1st, 2004, 4:10 pm

You can either middle click or Ctrl+click the bookmark.

Chiark · Post by **Chiark** » June 2nd, 2004, 2:45 am

That's pretty much the same annoyance level as right-clicking to achieve this. I find it more useful to open all bookmarks in a second tab and switch to it when it's loaded. If I really don't need the tab I'm reading, middle/ctrl/right-click to open the bookmark in the *current* tab would seem more sensible.

sboulema · Post by **sboulema** » June 14th, 2004, 8:44 am

If you use miniT open chrome/minit.jar/content/minit.xul (in your profile; .jar is like .zip) and replace
Code: Select all
t.ordinal = position;
with
Code: Select all
t.ordinal = position = this.mCurrentTab.ordinal-0+1;

I cant get this to work on 0.8.0+ (20040609) anyone had better luck with is ?

dorando · Post by **dorando** » June 14th, 2004, 10:04 am

WFM with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040613 Firefox/0.8.0+

Next version will support pref("browser.tabs.extensions.open_tab_in", 2); (but none of the others)...

sboulema · Post by **sboulema** » June 14th, 2004, 10:24 am

Is there a known conflict with other extensions? on a new clean profile it works, but with my usual profile it doesnt work. The drag&drop doesnt work and the open tab after current is working either. the context option does show up (dont know if it works).

Im using these extensions:
- TBP
- Scrollable Tabs
- Close Tabs on Double Click
- Show Failed URL
- AIO
- Adblock
- Chromedit
- Cute menus
- Download Manager Tweak

Moonwolf · Post by **Moonwolf** » June 14th, 2004, 10:31 am

sboulema, that's probably Firefox's event handler bug. Try changing the order the extensions are loaded in. Thankfully that can now be done through the extension manager, no manual editing required! And if I'm right, vote for this bug (if you haven't already)!

subferno · Post by **subferno** » June 14th, 2004, 1:11 pm

I may have missed it in this thread but I am looking for 2 extensions which is present in TBE.

First is Auto Focues: tabs get focus when mouse pointer hovers over it

Second is Undo Close list: a toolbar button that gives a list of closed tabs that could be opened again (more than 3 closed tabs)

Thanks

sboulema · Post by **sboulema** » June 14th, 2004, 1:19 pm

I found out that for me a combo of MiniT with Scrollable Tabs, breaks MiniT...

TheOneKEA · Post by **TheOneKEA** » June 14th, 2004, 1:22 pm

subferno wrote:I may have missed it in this thread but I am looking for 2 extensions which is present in TBE.

First is Auto Focues: tabs get focus when mouse pointer hovers over it

Second is Undo Close list: a toolbar button that gives a list of closed tabs that could be opened again (more than 3 closed tabs)

Thanks

Undo Close Tab, while not as fancy, will fulfill your second request...

subferno · Post by **subferno** » June 14th, 2004, 1:53 pm

TheOneKEA wrote:
subferno wrote:I may have missed it in this thread but I am looking for 2 extensions which is present in TBE.

First is Auto Focues: tabs get focus when mouse pointer hovers over it

Second is Undo Close list: a toolbar button that gives a list of closed tabs that could be opened again (more than 3 closed tabs)

Thanks

Undo Close Tab, while not as fancy, will fulfill your second request...

It only restores the last 3 closed tabs though. Maybe doing more than 3 could be more beneficial

dorando · Post by **dorando** » June 14th, 2004, 1:59 pm

subferno wrote:It only restores the last 3 closed tabs though. Maybe doing more than 3 could be more beneficial

Next version will allow to set more

sboulema wrote:I found out that for me a combo of MiniT with Scrollable Tabs, breaks MiniT...

Yup, I can reproduce... trying to find a workaround...