People seem to overcomplicate their usage patterns

[moonbat]

Used to think that doing this was a 'nerdy' or power user trait, but I see it is increasingly the opposite, coupled with 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing'. For one, creating multiple accounts with the same provider and switching them around. I've seen people with multiple Google accounts configured on their phone, then their billing information for playstore is associated with one and their contact information with another and their Gmail is on a third - and they tie themselves in knots switching between all of them.
Here I see it with those who hang onto old versions like grim death as though every point release breaks addons (since long before the Firefox ID deprecation kerfuffle) the way it probably does in Chromezilla land. And then one fine day you upgrade skipping 3 milestone versions and bork your profile because you were supposed to upgrade to 28.17 first. Or the 'I run the browser with 250 tabs, why is it crashing/hogging memory/slow' weirdoes.
I have 106 addons here, I've never interfered with the update process (relying on stevepusser's builds also helps, since there's a couple of days delay after a release before he can publish a fresh build) and never faced any problems so far.
One thing that I do before a milestone upgrade is to backup my profile directory after clearing cache and exiting the browser in the rare event that I do have to downgrade the version.

For those using old Firefox extensions, at least search the addons site to look for a fork or alternative, that quite often have fixed bugs or added additional features(several of my forks). And understand that it is the extension developer who can assist you, not the Pale Moon developers. If you can't find the extension's original developer, there's not much you can do besides trying to fix it yourself so better to look around for a current alternative first.

[Sob__]

Or the 'I run the browser with 250 tabs, why is it crashing/hogging memory/slow' weirdoes.

Hey, we're just victims of UI shortcomings. It's very difficult, but now I usually manage to keep tabs under ~50. I'd love to go even lower, but so far I didn't find any solution for two things:

1) "Keep it for later" - I find some interesting links, open them in tabs as a queue, start reading them, but I don't have enough time, have to leave, whatever. When I come back, I find them exactly where I left them. It has two great properties when compared to saving them as bookmarks. One, they are right in my face, I won't forget them. Two, it required zero additional effort.

2) "Auto-updating bookmarks" - Similar to previous, if I leave https://example.tld/page/10/ open as tab, next time I'll find exactly that. Then I browse to /page/15/ and it stays there. There's again this pleasant zero additional effort thing. If it was bookmark, I'd have to update it all the time, it's terribly inconvenient.

But I'm not complaining about resources used by browser, the Lull The Tabs extension helps with that a lot.

[andyprough]

1) "Keep it for later" - I find some interesting links, open them in tabs as a queue, start reading them, but I don't have enough time, have to leave, whatever. When I come back, I find them exactly where I left them. It has two great properties when compared to saving them as bookmarks. One, they are right in my face, I won't forget them. Two, it required zero additional effort.

In the late 90's we couldn't afford to be online all the time or to have multiple browsers open all the time, since we were paying by the minute for slow dialup internet. So we came up with what was called "scrapbooking", and professional researchers were big fans of it.

You might want to look into it if you haven't already, Pale Moon has an excellent scrapbooking extension called ScrapBook X. Instead of keeping all those tabs open, you just save the entire page and however many layers of linked pages you'd like in a very well organized scrapbook that does not change or update until you tell it to. All that stuff that is waiting for you to find time to read is in a very well organized tree structure in a nice sidebar, is available offline, is searchable, and allows you to highlight and take notes on it and manipulate it however you like.

And it also requires almost no additional effort - just right click what you are reading and tell it to be added to whichever scrapbook. It's far more organized and easy to navigate than leaving huge numbers of tabs open.

[Sob__]

I was there too, oh the memories, or nightmares, depending on how I look at it. It's mixed bag. Anyway, thanks for the tip, but I'm afraid this approach is a) too close to something I don't want to be returning to, b) in a way overkill, I just need simple queue, no more complex structure, notes, searching, none of that. Few tens of tabs is not too bad.

[moonbat]

The risk here is you are one browser crash away from losing all those tabs. Modern sites tend to be very poorly coded and leaving them open but idle can lead to javascript memory leaks and general instability.

[thosrtanner]

You have 106 addons and yet you think people who have 250 tabs open are odd? The more extensions you have the more likely it is that they'll start interfering with each other.

A lot of peoples usage patterns are grounded in experience convenience. For instance, unstable releases have caused people not to update on every minor version update. And certainly not on version .0 because yo know there'll soon be a version .1 to fix the things that .0 broke.

Keeping tabs open for pages I mean to read later is more convenient than bookmarks. Actually, bookmarks in general I find unfriendly, and prefer addons such as speed dial to collect pages I'd like to revisit. So, yeah, 250 tabs is not a big number.

[Moonchild]

You have 106 addons and yet you think people who have 250 tabs open are odd? The more extensions you have the more likely it is that they'll start interfering with each other.

Although you have a point, there is a subtle but important difference between having known and tested, task specific extensions that actually will not even activate in most cases, and having many documents open with foreign content that each likely cause more strain on the browser than all extensions combined. Compare the difference between having a car with a lot of accessories and mods on it vs. a car filled to the brim with people. One is easy to drive, the other... not so much

[moonbat]

The more extensions you have the more likely it is that they'll start interfering with each other.

Only if you're dumb enough to use more than one extension that does the same job, such as an adblocker, tab management or a userscript engine. Why on earth would two completely unrelated extensions interfere with each other?

[andyprough]

Actually, bookmarks in general I find unfriendly

This is an interesting comment. I wonder how bookmarks can be unfriendly? With the Pale Moon sidebar, and with bookmark folders, and with the ability to drag and drop a url from the address bar onto any specific spot on the bookmarks list, it seems to me they are a fantastic help.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

It's a long time I abandoned the idea of "a lot" of tabs open (although my lot will be considered rather few by some of the open tab fans) in favour of bookmarks grouped in folders on the bookmark toolbar, plus saved sessions in session manager.

[moonbat]

With the Pale Moon sidebar, and with bookmark folders, and with the ability to drag and drop a url from the address bar onto any specific spot on the bookmarks list

Plus you can simply start typing the title or URL of the bookmark in the addressbar for it to automatically be searched and show up in the dropdown. I have around 1500+ bookmarks exported from my Delicious account when it went under, all of them nicely tagged as well, so searching is a breeze.

[andyprough]

I have around 1500+ bookmarks exported from my Delicious account when it went under, all of them nicely tagged as well, so searching is a breeze.

That's the other great thing about bookmarks - it's like building a personal library of books that you love, you could continue to build your bookmarks library for years and take it with you to different computers. That would be impossible to do with most other solutions, especially with the solution of leaving hundreds of tabs open.

[Kerebron]

Keeping open dozens/hundreds/thousands of tabs is as sensible as keeping all your groceries on a huge pile in the middle of your kitchen, instead of using shelves, cupboards and a fridge. Or maybe you do?

[moonbat]

it's like building a personal library of books that you love, you could continue to build your bookmarks library for years

Absolutely, and there's tons of great addons for bookmark management and enhancement in CAA that should be directly usable again with the next milestone.

[thosrtanner]

Actually, bookmarks in general I find unfriendly

This is an interesting comment. I wonder how bookmarks can be unfriendly? With the Pale Moon sidebar, and with bookmark folders, and with the ability to drag and drop a url from the address bar onto any specific spot on the bookmarks list, it seems to me they are a fantastic help.

They don't work for me. I use tabgroups manager and speed dial and that works fine.

With reference to books - I keep my books in bookshelves, and bookmarks in the actual books... I don't have a collection of bookmarks outside the books telling me which book to go to.

[moonbat]

With reference to books

..is there a probability of your books vanishing if you accidentally knock over the bookshelf?

[Moonchild]

To head off a fruitless discussion about "which is better"... Either way works in their own way, and this is why Pale Moon tries to be flexible in what you can use. Keeping many tabs open though (grouped or not) is simply not very resource-friendly (and that's an objective fact) so you have to realise that it comes with related drawbacks like resource use, volatility of the session store (which was never designed to be used that way as it's a flat storage in object notation, not a database), etc.

If you want to keep the physical books analogy in the browser as it is currently designed, keeping tabs open is like not using bookmarks, but leaving the books themselves open. You can't store open books on bookshelves so you'll have to lay them out on tables. While that works as a system, you'll need a lot of room (= resources). If you have that room, that's fine, but if it grows and grows you'll have to walk around a lot more to find the one book you need to look at (which is slower, and so will the browser be), and the maid (= browser) will have a lot more rooms to keep clean and in order.

[somdcomputerguy]

With reference to books..

[moonbat]

Keeping many tabs open though (grouped or not) is simply not very resource-friendly (and that's an objective fact) so you have to realise that it comes with related drawbacks like resource use, volatility of the session store (which was never designed to be used that way as it's a flat storage in object notation, not a database), etc.

The main problem is when using it like this inevitably will lead to posts complaining about lost tabs after a crash. Just like those who use NoScript and then come here with problems. If one accepts the risk of occasional tab session loss then that's their choice, but I'd say it wastes time here having to repeatedly tell people to avoid this usage pattern.

Your expanded analogy is spot on

[Mæstro]

and the maid (= browser) will have a lot more rooms to keep clean and in order.

Off-topic:
Whenever I request a Pale Moon-tan on Pixiv, I know now that she is a meido.