Through circumstances not all that interesting, Doyce raised the question to me whether I use my open tabs (and the Firefox abilities to reopen same automatically) in lieu of a Bookmarks/Favorites file.
Mmmmmmyeah. A bit. Sorta.
I tend to keep a lot of tabs open, largely stuff I want to come back to short term. If I put it into Bookmarks/Favorites, I’d have to first remember to go look for it.
Things stay open until (a) I go past five rows of tabs (at which point my FF setup starts to scroll the tabs, which is annoying), at which point I clean some stuff out, (b) the tab-reopening stuff crashes, losing everything (rare), or (c) I spot something curious on a tab title, open it, and then dispose of that tab (and neighboring ones) one way or another.
So, right now, I have my first three tabs for my blog, Gmail, and GCal. Two tabs for Storyball stuff. For tabs for the Mountain Witch. Then a bunch of tabs for memes I mean to do sooner or later. Many more tabs that are left open for stuff I was reading but never finished or mean to blog about, or whatever.
Bookmarks are a bit more interesting (or less so, maybe). I have a massive Bookmarks (FF term; Favorites in IE) file. And I use maybe three or four items from it a month. The rest? Almost never used (or, in the case of one folder of Interesting Backup Material On Political Arguments I Expect To Have Some Day, never).
See, Google and my Blog are my Bookmarks. It’s faster for me to simply search for something in one place or the other (or both) to find (99% of the time) what I’m looking for.
I should really clear that other crap out. Except — who knows what wonders are there, that some day I’ll find the time and inclination and opportunity to look at? Bits of the past …
For those sites that I need to visit frequently enough — well, heck, that’s what my Links toolbar (IE term; FF calls it the Bookmarks toolbar) is for. And why I have about a hundred entries there. Which, yes, is insane, thank you for pointing that out.
So, yes, perhaps Doyce’s final observation — “Packrat” — is apt. Or accurate.
Wow. I’ve never had more than one row of tabs.
Question: Where the heck does the Firefox store the bookmarks? Whenever I’ve had to do a fresh install, I’ve saved the old Favorites folder, but it never has the newer bookmarks. I have to import from IE, which means whenever I save a bookmark in FF, I have to open IE and save it there as well.
Also, Firefox no longer has the handy Close Tab button to the right of my tabs; I have to click on the actual tab itself to close the current page. Any idea what extension I need to reinstall to get that feature back?
Are you on Firefox 1.5 or 2, Avo? (I’m still on 1.5.)
The booksmarks are stored in the profile data, which lurks somewhere in the hidden files on your machine. There are a number of FF extensions that will let you sync that info to an external backup file (on your PC or at a web page), to allow for access from elsewhere or restoring.
Not sure about the Close Tab button; I usually turn it off with my extensions (currently use Tab Mix Plus).