[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/workona-tab-manage...
I can have a separate named tab group for every project and also for work. It could be integrated with container tabs.
It's like old Tab Groups/Panorama that was once built in Firefox. It is a bit manual, because one has to move groups and tabs around, but it's quite intuitive.
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/firefox/addon/basic-panorama/
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-tab-...
If I open a bunch of tabs as a named group, then open a new, blank window, then enter the extension's UI, the list of groups only has my current window. Makes absolutely no sense. The "group" state has to be global (and visible on all devices, which I doubt this does).
The extensions also seem to be doing something weird by hiding tabs, which Firefox was warning me about.
Warning about tab hiding is normal. I assume that something that you would find perfect also would have to use tab hiding.
They need more work or something separate, because the manual resizing of groups seems like a busy-work. I would like something more like Simplified Tab Groups, but with good syncing as you said. I'm not sure how would it work with current Firefox APIs though. If extension shows you the same group for two separate widows, what would happen if you would select the group in both of them? It would have to create additional tabs so they would not be shared. Also I'm not sure if tab hiding API allows to mix tabs from different windows. I think that what you want is not possible currently as an extension.
The only two point when it needs to do something is when I want to restore a "group" that has been saved. If I close tabs or windows, nothing needs to be done; my hypothetical extension would already have saved their state to a database of some kind on every change.
As for multiple windows: An "open" group would be associated with a single window. You wouldn't be able to open a new window for a group that's already live and in use.
- I open a bunch of tabs.
- I click the Onetab icon. It closes all my tabs. What?
- It's now showing me a page listing the tabs I had open. Ok, I can name this group. I name it "Foo". Then I hit "Restore these tabs".
- I now have my tabs back. Great.
- I click the Onetab icon. It closes all my tabs again, and this time my named group is gone, replaced with an unnamed group containing the tabs as they were. What?
- I restore the tabs again (sigh).
- I open another window with some tabs. Maybe I can save this window as a separate group. I click the Onetab icon. It closes all my windows!
It's completely nonsensical. From what I can tell, Onetab is designed to wrap all your current windows into one group that can be saved and then restored later, but restoring it actually deletes the saved group.
It's as if you had a photo scrapbook in real life that disappeared when you opened it, leaving you only with the photos. Then, when you want to put the scrapbook back on the shelf, you get a new scrapbook and put everything back in.
It's fully functional and does exactly what you say you want. It could use some UI improvements though.
Tab Session Manager doesn't have a link between your windows and the session state. All it does is snapshot the state of your browser.
For example, say I open a few tabs and save the window as the session "My trip". Then I open a new tab in the same window. This new tab doesn't get added to the session. The only way to update it is to go into the session list and click "Add to session" from the context menu.
In fact, it's profoundly stupid: With the default settings, if you open a session, then close a window, it will save a copy of your window state as a new "auto saved" session. You'll end up with an endless list of copies.
What I want: Once I've opened a session as a window, it should track all the activity. Opening a tab should add it to the session; removing a tab should remove it. Closing the window and then click on the session from the list should revive the window as it was when it was closed. In other words, a window's set of tabs is the active session at all times, and the tabs are persistent. It should be transparent, no need to click on things to micromanage it.
For example, let's say I'm planning a trip. I will have tabs open for Google Flights, Airbnb, Trip Advisor, Google Maps and so on. A single window is one "project". It doesn't make sense to have those tabs open all the time -- just when I need them. Yet I have to keep them open because browsers don't have a way to treat a single window as a kind of persistent tab set. The best browsers can do right now is to bookmark multiple tabs as a folder and then later restore them. That's not too useful since there's no way to update this folder the same way.
What I'd like is to have windows be "named". I want to save my window as "Puerto Rico trip" and close it. Later I want to open it again and continue where I was. At all times my tabs and history are associated with the same "project".
I've been longing for this feature for maybe 10 years now. I started developing it as a Safari extension once, but ran into limitations in the API's support for opening windows.