Dealing with large amounts of pages in a common web browser
I have been using xmonad for some years now, and all throughout, the browser I have been using has been a private fork of surf[0], which is essentially just a Webkit webview in a window by itself. However, I would like to switch to a more widely used browser (Chrome, Firefox, Conkeror, whatever) for usability and security reasons. The nice thing about surf is that it opens a window per page, which means that they are all visible to xmonad, and navigable through things like GridSelect, which would not be the case if I simply had two dozen tabs open in Firefox. However, sometimes tabs are nice - specifically, it's practical to use CTRL-clicking to open new pages in the background. Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with this? Some combination of Firefox hacks and xmonad layouts? How do you set up your browsers? [0]: http://surf.suckless.org/ -- \ Troels /\ Henriksen
On Sat, Jan 10 10:12, Troels Henriksen wrote:
Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with this? Some combination of Firefox hacks and xmonad layouts? How do you set up your browsers?
I don't have a good answer for you, but this is something I've also thought about and tried to tweak. It's a bit odd to have a window manager, a browser that manages tabs and groups of tabs, a text editor with both tabs and its own internal concept of window layout, a terminal with tabs, and inside it, a terminal multiplexer with again its own concept of window layout and tabs. Still, I haven't been able to really unify all this very well. For Firefox in particular, though, there are a few useful tweaks/tips: - Most, but not all, of the superflous UI can be customized away. - Extensions like this might help: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/hide-tab-bar-with-one-tab/ - Setting your homepage to "about:newtab" will give new windows the same useful behaviour as new tabs, like putting the cursor directly in the address bar when you start. - Shift-click opens links in a new window. Hope this helps a bit, -- Felix
On Sat, 10 Jan, 2015 at 09:12:19 GMT, Troels Henriksen wrote:
I have been using xmonad for some years now, and all throughout, the browser I have been using has been a private fork of surf[0], which is essentially just a Webkit webview in a window by itself. However, I would like to switch to a more widely used browser (Chrome, Firefox, Conkeror, whatever) for usability and security reasons.
I'm an uzbl developer; nice to see others using that class of browser :) . Anyways, I'm in a similar boat with the security bits (though I find Firefox usability to be less than stellar) though. I do have TODO items to implement at least request-policy, https-everywhere, adblock, and some other addons I use ported over to uzbl at...some point, but time is not always plentiful (there's also the WebKit2 port that needs to happen and is more urgent).
The nice thing about surf is that it opens a window per page, which means that they are all visible to xmonad, and navigable through things like GridSelect, which would not be the case if I simply had two dozen tabs open in Firefox. However, sometimes tabs are nice - specifically, it's practical to use CTRL-clicking to open new pages in the background.
Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with this? Some combination of Firefox hacks and xmonad layouts? How do you set up your browsers?
Personally, I just drag Firefox tabs around as needed. As for uzbl, I use a mix of Tall, TwoPane, and Full layouts to manage lots of windows depending on the case. Tall is used by default, TwoPane when I'm going through a list of things (bug tracker, emails, images, etc.), and Full for focusing on a single window. It also helps that I have things set to, by default, pop up behind the current window and without focus. --Ben
Didn't know about gridSelect. I should check out.
I've used to firefox tab group feature for organize and select from many tabs.
http://i.imgur.com/9muKcW0.png
The layout need to be adjusted manually. Firefox does not layout them
like screenshot. It would be good enough put all tabs left to right,
top to bottom by time. Anyway it's worth it.
On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 11:36 AM, Ben Boeckel
On Sat, 10 Jan, 2015 at 09:12:19 GMT, Troels Henriksen wrote:
I have been using xmonad for some years now, and all throughout, the browser I have been using has been a private fork of surf[0], which is essentially just a Webkit webview in a window by itself. However, I would like to switch to a more widely used browser (Chrome, Firefox, Conkeror, whatever) for usability and security reasons.
I'm an uzbl developer; nice to see others using that class of browser :) . Anyways, I'm in a similar boat with the security bits (though I find Firefox usability to be less than stellar) though. I do have TODO items to implement at least request-policy, https-everywhere, adblock, and some other addons I use ported over to uzbl at...some point, but time is not always plentiful (there's also the WebKit2 port that needs to happen and is more urgent).
The nice thing about surf is that it opens a window per page, which means that they are all visible to xmonad, and navigable through things like GridSelect, which would not be the case if I simply had two dozen tabs open in Firefox. However, sometimes tabs are nice - specifically, it's practical to use CTRL-clicking to open new pages in the background.
Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with this? Some combination of Firefox hacks and xmonad layouts? How do you set up your browsers?
Personally, I just drag Firefox tabs around as needed. As for uzbl, I use a mix of Tall, TwoPane, and Full layouts to manage lots of windows depending on the case. Tall is used by default, TwoPane when I'm going through a list of things (bug tracker, emails, images, etc.), and Full for focusing on a single window. It also helps that I have things set to, by default, pop up behind the current window and without focus.
--Ben
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Ben Boeckel
The nice thing about surf is that it opens a window per page, which means that they are all visible to xmonad, and navigable through things like GridSelect, which would not be the case if I simply had two dozen tabs open in Firefox. However, sometimes tabs are nice - specifically, it's practical to use CTRL-clicking to open new pages in the background.
Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with this? Some combination of Firefox hacks and xmonad layouts? How do you set up your browsers?
Personally, I just drag Firefox tabs around as needed. As for uzbl, I use a mix of Tall, TwoPane, and Full layouts to manage lots of windows depending on the case. Tall is used by default, TwoPane when I'm going through a list of things (bug tracker, emails, images, etc.), and Full for focusing on a single window.
This makes it hard to deal with having two dozen tabs open across several different windows, however. It is annoying, because in xmonad this is already a solved problem for windows... I have come to the hypothesis that the best solution is to write a Firefox hack/extension that allows GridSelect[0] to present the Firefox tabs as well as windows, and if a tab is selected, not just select the Firefox window, but also make it focus that tab. Too bad I don't really know anything about writing Firefox extensions (let alone one that can communicate with other processes), but I guess it is not too late to learn. [0]: Well, really a personal fork called gsmenu: http://sigkill.dk/pub/configs/xmonad/lib/GSMenuPick.hs -- \ Troels /\ Henriksen
On Mon, Feb 02, 2015 at 13:40:50 +0100, Troels Henriksen wrote:
This makes it hard to deal with having two dozen tabs open across several different windows, however. It is annoying, because in xmonad this is already a solved problem for windows...
Well, I also don't belong to the "100 tabs" crowd, so my use cases might be a bit different. I think I have less than a dozen tabs open here almost all of the time.
I have come to the hypothesis that the best solution is to write a Firefox hack/extension that allows GridSelect[0] to present the Firefox tabs as well as windows, and if a tab is selected, not just select the Firefox window, but also make it focus that tab. Too bad I don't really know anything about writing Firefox extensions (let alone one that can communicate with other processes), but I guess it is not too late to learn.
Well, the problem is that all Firefox windows have the same process so selecting a window by PID won't work, but even so, Firefox doesn't know how to change XMonad's current workspace (I don't use EWMH at least), so things get funky if the selected tab is off-screen (since Firefox *does* steal the keyboard focus). I guess you could have Firefox expose the tab list via an X property, but that doesn't sound too pretty. --Ben
participants (4)
-
Ben Boeckel -
Felix Crux -
Troels Henriksen -
YCH