3 instances of firefox with multiple tabs in each. What are you some kind of super human web crawler? Maybe you should stack three more monitors on top and setup another box just to run all your web browsers.
This post is just silly. Why have multiple browser instances when you can have tabs? If you have multiple instances for logical grouping, then you’d know where your email accounts are. Hard as I try, I can’t see the problem.
In Gnome I use gmail-notify to provide Outlook style alerts for incoming e-mail. Clicking the alert opens a new tabbed instance of GMail. When I’m done reading, I close the tab. I know this type of alert can be annoying, but it helps me keep my Firefox tabs to a minimum. Perhaps an Exposeish extension for Firefox would be a good idea? Hovering over an area on the browser could provide a icons (favicon) of each of the tabs?
I have to agree with quite a few of the comments here. I think that you’re a bit too disorganized. Learn how to work with two monitors before you rush into losing yourself with 3.
If you can’t find where you left something on your computer desktop then shame on you. What hope for the mess of your real desktop?
You don’t need 3 browsers - one of them is just giving you distractions anyway. Sure you want to compare things side by side. Open a new window and close it when you’re done. Move the browser from screen to screen if need be (you can find with Alt-tab).
Forgetting to open your email account is another cop out. (Dog ate your homework as well at some stage). Set it as a homepage so it starts when the browser does (this is a new feature in some browsers).
You can be too thin! I guess that you can have too much desktop as well.
I use two monitors and two browsers (different ones). Both with tabs. No pages identical in either (unless I’m testing how things work on each browser).
Maybe you need a PA? Could be a little animated one that would tap on the screen when you’re trying to find something. “It’s looks like you’re trying to find your shoes.”
I agree with everything else you said.
@Alex Chamberlain:
“Classic bad-UI Stockholm syndrome. Hierarchies are an obsolete artifact of the physical world, where an object can’t be in more than one place at the same time. Tags are the future.”
Excuse me if you’re being sarcastic here, but I’m going to have to assume you’re serious…
…are you serious?!
Sure hierarchies are often misapplied in user interfaces, and the Windows TreeView control is clearly the result of a drunken bet between spastics, but hierarchies are in no way an “obsolete artifact”.
Browser tabs are an example of a hierarchical organization (OS handles the browser window, browser window handles the separate tubes) that has been immensely successful. Before IE7, the Mozilla/Opera/whatever crowd were (I assume literally) wetting themselves over how much more tabby their browsers were, and with good reason I think. Tags definitely work well with e-mails, blog posts, and other items of the sort, but beyond that they’re just “a polite way of helicopter peeing” (to quote the great Hani Suleiman).
Terrible article, Jeff, I’m disappointed in you. Why would you open multiple browsers? The problem is you’re still trying to use the OLD paradigm of multiple windows and half-ass integrate tabs. One browser window, multiple tabs, get with the new paradigm.
Would I be right in guessing that the several respondents who seem incredulous that side-by-side browsing could ever be useful are people who use single monitors?
There are many times when it’s useful to view information in one application whilst typing into another. Often these are two different applications, but if they’re web-based then they’ll both reside in web browsers. I can fully understand the requirement (or desire, at least) to manage tabs across multiple browser windows.
On a single screen, this style of working is almost prohibited by the lack of real estate, but once you have multiple screens this sort of thing suddenly becomes a no-cost option.
The use of big multiple screens is what windowing operating systems have been waiting for since whenever it was they were invented 
As far as not being able to see the tabs, it’s not a problem in Firefox. There is a drop-down at the far-right of the tabs. Click it and you get a select list of all tabs with favicons.
---- Jeff wrote ----
The only thing I can think of is a plain-text search facility where I type “Gmail”, and the OS would automatically highlight that tab (or window) and bring it to the front. That presupposes a very high level of integration between the application tabs and the operating system, however.
There is an application out there that already has this kind of functionality, namely you hit a short-cut key (CAPS in this case) and then type ‘go’ and then part of the name of the tab/window you’re looking for, instantly on screen a complete list of windows/tabs that match your search are listed on screen. If the tab/window you’re looking for is already selected you just release the short-cut key and the window is automatically focused, you don’t even need to type the full name!
They have some other nice features as well, like searching google using the same mechanism of the short-cut key to search interface.
Check it out here (warning the product is not free but is low-cost, they have a 30-day free trial):
P.S. I have no links with this company, I just found the software recently myself and have been finding it quite useful.
Cyrus isn’t dead, he’s just sleeping.
And posting over on Ars Technica’s programming forums as Metasyntactic. ( http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve?a=profileu=5880993965 )
If you want to find him, just player hate on IntelliSense in VS 2005 and he will appear.
Nominally back on-subject, I hated tabs when I started using tabbed browsers for the same reason - I’d be using multiple browser instances and finding the tab I wanted became an infuriating game of hide-and-seek. When I cut back to a single browser and oodles of tabs, I started to see the point of them.
That said, tabs can be used for evil - VS 2005’s “open new tabs on the left instead of the right like everyone else in the world” and “let me show you the directory name instead of the file name” tab handling leave me wanting to throttle whoever made the call on that all.
Umm, I either didnt get a point with multiple browsers if you have a tabs, but its up to your own work style. In your case Ctrl+Q can help - leave your browser window in “Quick Tabs” mode before switch and I think you can easily fing Gmail window even in tabs
I would rename this article.
The Problem With Tabbed Interfaces ON THREE MONITORS
Most people run one browser with many tabs, on one screen.
That is 95% or more of users out there.
Umm, I either didnt get a point with multiple browsers if you have a tabs, but its up to your own work style. In your case Ctrl+Q can help - leave your browser window in “Quick Tabs” mode before switch and I think you can easily find Gmail window even in tabs
If it hasn’t already been mentioned, ‘Tab to Window’ is lighter weight than tabmixplus and provides you with ‘Move to New Window’, ‘Copy to new Window’, and ‘Join to Window’ when you right click on a tab.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2062
sorry for doublepost - I thought my browser didnt send first time =( (and fixed typo )
Would I be right in guessing that the several respondents who seem incredulous that side-by-side browsing could ever be useful are people who use single monitors?
Side-by-side browsing is one thing, 9 browser windows on 3 monitors is something entirely different. I use 3 monitors myself and find that thought of having 9 browsers open across them terribly inefficient.
You mean you can’t navigate tabs using window navigation techniques? Ummm… OK.
Website? Browser window.
sounds like someone should write an extension for launchy which indexes any open browser window tabs.
I use launchy at the moment to index all the .cs files in the branch I am working on. Rather than scrolling through the horrific solution explorer, i just think of the source file, ctrl-alt and voila!
I guess I’m wondering what the problem is.
In IE 7:
Tools Internet Options Tabs Settings button
Uncheck "Enabled Tabbed Browsing"
Restart IE
In Firefox it looks like this is the closest you can come:
Tools Options Tabs
Select "New pages should be opened in a new window"
Uncheck "Always show the tab bar"
Click OK
Unfortunately even with these changes if you hit CTRL+T in Firefox (but not IE 7) you still get a new tab. There may be some way in about:config to completely disable tabs, but I was too lazy to Google for it.
But honestly, if tabbed browsing doesn’t suit your work style, then simply TURN IT OFF.
I doubt Jeff’s work style is typical of most computer users and so as an atypical computer user, he should expect that, from time-to-time, the default options in software (such as tabbed browsing being enabled) will not suit him and he should expect to have to modify those settings.
To all the debate about whether tabbed browser is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or the spawn of Satan I say DO WHATEVER YOU WANT. The two most popular web browsers provide a way to (mostly) disable the feature, or enable it, or even customize the behaviour. So set it up the way that suits your work style and let everyone else do the same.
I saw Cyrus back in April. He is doing well. =) Great guy.