Hi,
Once in a while I try to clean up my tabs.
First thing I do is use "merge all windows" to put all tabs into one window.
This often causes a memory clog and firefox get stuck in this state for 10-20 minutes
I have recorded one such instance.
I have tried using the "discard all tabs" addon, unfortunately, it is also getting frozen by the memory clog.
Sometimes I will just reboot my PC as that is faster.
Unfortunately, killing firefox this way, does not save the new tab order, so when I start firefox again, it will have 20+ windows open, which I again, merge all pages and then it clogs again !
So far the only solution I have found is just wait the 20 minutes.
Once the "memory clog" is passed, it runs just fine.
I would like better control over tab discard. and maybe some way of limitting bloat. For instance, I would rather keep a lower number of undiscarded youtube that as they seem to be insanely bloated.
In other cases, for most website I would like to never discard the contents.
In my ideal world, I would like the tabs to get frozen and saved to disk permanently, rather than assuming discard tabs can be reloaded. As if the websites were going to exist forever and discarding a tab is like cleaning a cache.
That’s fair, maybe you’re using the wrong tool though, something like an internet archive sounds more like what you need.
Take every tab you open and save a PDF, all the text, and all the images, then put a timestamp on them before deleting the tab. That’s not the point of a browser though, that’s an entirely different product.
You’re welcome to build it though, or ask Microsoft if they can make Recall work for tabs.
I was going to also say that OP might be wanting something like Recall (which might be one of the few instances where it constantly saving shit would be perfect). But they would need like the most extreme version that isn't just saving searchable screenshots.
I also think that one major issue for OP is more about how the actual sites are coded these days. As even if a single tab is being used, the shit can just decide to force it to update the contents at any time (like how just having Gmail open you will see new messages just show up even without refreshing your browser).
It seems like the perfect situation for OP would be if the web still worked like it did pre-web 2.0, but with using the current version of FF. Outside of that, it really seems like they need to just start having sites be auto-completely downloaded for full offline use.
I am still shocked that the main issues being had seems to be that it taking 10s of mins to allow FF to process that much stuff is the frustration. Which does seem to mean FF is holding up pretty well given the situation. Their complaint about tab isolation being too much overhead seems odd though. As it would seem that going back to not having that would mean a much higher chance of just everything just being yeet-ed out of nowhere.
I am not sure how their headspace of using virtual machines approach would be much better as shit would still have the issues of sites still self-updating and loading up in the first place. Though given they seem to have dramatically more coding experience, I am much more ignorant of this shit.