new tab or new window?

[angus]

I'm generally a new tab person.  I'll have up to 20 tabs open in a single browser window sometimes.

However, I have a friends that organizes his thoughts into windows.  Like, if he's looking into football stats, gameday highlights, sports analysis, then he opens new tabs.  If the thought occurs to him to start searching for gifts for someone, then that merits a new window, and any leads followed from that task opens new tabs in that window.  Then, if he decides to investigate Turkish torture techniques, he opens another window, and any leads following from that causes him to open new tabs.  So he'll have broad categorizations for windows (football, presents, torture, etc.) and within those windows he'll have tabs open for more specific categorization (statistics, game highlights, Terry Bradshaw's latest wisdom, etc.)

So I ask him, "What if you decide you want to buy your friend a Tony Romo jersey as a present?" and it perplexes him a bit.  He says, "well, that's a present."  And I say, "well, yeah, it's a present but it's a football thing and you'll get distracted and it'll lead you to other football things.  What do you do then?" and it perplexes him further?

Anyway, it got me thinking about how people organize.

[angus]

I generally keep four windows open: two for different and totally unrelated forums (of which this is one), one for a webmail account, and one for my Bible studies.  However, if I need to open something I expect to be a temporary blip I just open a new tab in whatever window happens to be up front at the time.

what if your forum endeavors lead you to the bible, or vice-versa?

[angus]

Well, vice-versa has never happened. 

hahaha.  Even as I typed vice-versa I thought about how anachronistic it would be.

Okay, fair enough.  I'm experimenting with multiple windows today.  Doesn't really work for me as well, as I find my threads are a bit scattered.  I think I'll stick with new tabs.

[angus]

I have 148 tabs open right now.

    

That's impressive.


I have six now.  Typically I have email in one tab, something professional open in a couple of tabs, this forum in one tab, WaPo maybe, and a google map of something.  If my ramblings lead me to something weird, then I satisfy my curiosity and close the tab afterward.  I close lots of tabs.  I guess I should have considered that tab people can be further subcategorized into tab closers and those who leave their tabs open indefinitely.  My son's a leave-it-open tab guy.  On the computer he uses most often, which I happen to be on now, I frequently find 20 or more tabs open.  

[angus]

It helps (for me at least) that I have my main task bar on the right rather than on the traditional bottom. 

I've tried having the task bar on the right for a couple of hours now.  I see that it does facilitate window toggling somewhat, but there's still some inconvenience (I use Windows 7, and the browser icons for multiple windows show up as a stack, and the it's a two-step process for the user to choose the application and then choose the window).  Also, I have a tendency to accidentally grab some other application when I scroll.  That could probably be refined with usage and practice.

[angus]

Wow, this is really going one way.  83% with 56% of votes counted.  If I worked at CNN or Fox I'd call it already.  Anyway, I'm going out on a limb and trying the tabs-for-broad subjects approach, and even putting the task bar on the right it's a pain in the ass.  I can see why 80something (and for BRTD's benefit, I'll define 80something as 80 or above) percent of the posters are tabs folks.

I do also appreciate the one vote for the fifth option.  You can imagine what I typed, but it was apparently automatically censored upon posting.  Dammit Torie.