Designing a better browser\workflow for Twitter & more
- aka tinder for tabs
- status: inspired braindump
- Premise:
- My current twitter workflow :
- open twitter TL
- open a bunch of tweets in new tabs
- try to go through them but often bounce off distractedly
I want a new workflow where I tag things for later, then "later" I'm shown 1 at a time & must complete/ditch A before seeing B
- also nowdothis.com (now defunct)
- / the Intend Next Action tab, which was itself inspired by NowDoThis
- this whole concept is like nowdothis.com but for tabs instead of todos
- nowtabthis.com
- related:
- I realize I kind of want this for not just twitter but other tabs as well.
- GTD is kind of pointing at the thing but I don't think it adequately exists yet, and it could be WAAAY more of a game. Maybe this could be part of Memex\WorldBrain? Should talk with Rob Haisfield about it.
- Anyway, an initial stab at an interface, leaving aside how it would actually be implemented (might literally need to be its own browser, although based on what I saw Moment do, can probably be hacked up with an extension)
- Come to think of it, Moment's stacks or whatever were kind of trying to solve a similar thing! They might be a good candidate for who to implement this.
- Oh, and metamitya / knovigator also seems relevant to this whole thing
- Okay, so suppose I've got the power. What does this look like? What do I want to experience, as a user?
- (the below will probably have some sorts of roam integrations)
- What are the elements, that go together?
- clear the slate
- the ability to, at any moment, to quickly archive all of my open tabs in a way that I'll be able to touch them later
- touch them later is 2 things:
- 1. find them if I'm specifically looking for them
- could use a mixture of tagging plus date-based search etc
- 2. ensure that if there's some sort of next action I want to take, that I get prompted to either take that action, or not
- this would be an AMAZING thing to have and is half of the motivation for building this thing
- although, like GTD, the other half must be actually-good or else it won't be sustainable and one will need to stop putting things in it that one actually wants to ensure get looked at
- ideally it ensures things get looked at way better than just opening them in a new tab / leaving them open
- but even "about the same" would suffice to enable the amazing clear the slate move
- collection mode/move
- instead of even needing to clear the slate, you could just use some shortcut instead of ctrl/cmd+tab, to put links into your pile instead of opening them in a new tab
- "open" & "close" are part of the whole tab metaphor
- and "open" kind of means "load into computer memory: fetch the site, run the code"
- but functionally we often don't need it loaded into memory yet
- the move we're actually wanting to make is "queue this up to look at it later"
- tinder for tabs
- drawing from the stuff you saved with clear the slate & collection mode/move
- kind of like stumbleupon but for your own browser history
- also kind of like tab snooze, except it never interrupts you
- also kind of like pocket, but designed to be interactive
- ^ this point has been here since the beginning but multiple people seem to have missed it
- if I can't reply to tweets from right within the UI, then this is missing the whole point
- here's how it goes:
- you open up some kind of special window/mode and it presents you with exactly one of your saved tabs
- I was gonna say "while in that mode, you can't access eg the rest of twitter" but that doesn't quite make sense as threading often involves doing more searching.
- it maybe could block the home & notifications pages though
- (which I already kind of do unofficially)
- there could be something that filters the content somehow, by like, tags, or sites, or content-types
- eg maybe you could somehow exclude videos or something
- then like, above all of the actual content is a kind of bar, which has maybe something like
- a text box in which to think out loud about the tab
- (these notes would be sync'ed to roam no matter what else you then did)
- buttons to put the tab back in the pile
- (warning: snooze can turn anything into a todo list... maybe you get an allotment of only like 3 of these per day - more could be paid content lol)
- maybe one that is like "later today"
- maybe one that is like "not for at least a week/month"
- the text-box notes would then be shown when the tab is reshown (maybe like, separatedly date/time-stamped)
- [and this could use some sort of spaced-repetition algorithm]
- button to essentially archive the tab
- which, functionally, is like "close tab" because once it's in the system it's already like, stored in the archive
- if the tab isn't already a twitter tab, a button to [tweet]
- "tab" is actually itself an outdated metaphor that is inspired by the tabs on file folders!
- (and then "closing" them is actually kind of weird in that you lose all of the order originally implied by having them arranged together. "closing" a folder leaves it as it is, but this completely breaks the metaphor because it destroys a lot of information)
- a browser could in principle keep not just history but like, the whole flow of which tabs were ever next to each other. each url would get saved as an entity within eg roam, and tagged with timestamps and adjacent tabs whenever you open it or something
- what would be a better new metaphor to replace tabs?
- the randomness of it (although I guess technically it could be deterministically ordered and sorted by various things) has had me using the word "pile"... "document" is sort of it
- page, site, frame?
- page & site are clearly something else
- I kinda like frame...
- it's like a frame almost in the movie sense... in that it has its own lil history/state, but at a given moment only displays one thing
- but like, what actually is a "tab"? it's......... not just a url or a hyperlink.... it's something like, a representation of browser state...
- it's actually a pretty weird concept, in how bendable it is
- like consider these tab management extensions
- Tab Snooze: it doesn't just present you with a link or reminder later but it actually reopens the tab
- The Great Suspender: it doesn't destroy the fact that the tab was actually opened, it just stops the process
- OneTab: it doesn't just archive your tabs "somewhere", it converts them all into a single tab
- SessionBuddy: tracks not just a list of links, but dates and windows, and can restore those in a fair bit of detail
- and the number it shows on the tab is the number of actually opened sites at a given time
- Motion: (link) has a thing that compresses tabs into one active tab with an in-frame manager over top
- they all have in common that they rely on the basic unit of a browser "tab" as being fundamental
- I'm thinking about people (maybe Ben Kuhn?) talking about forcing all of their browsing to use new windows instead of just new tabs
- and this is kind of neat but it's missing the thing that should exist instead of tabs
- there's something more like "threads" or "trains of thought" that wants to exist here
- hmm... trains is making me think like, what if instead of tabs we had "cars" or "carriages" or "wagons" or something. I don't quite like that, although it is neat to note the appropriateness of how one car can go to different sites (in a physical sites)
- knovigator is onto something with its "quest" objects, in that you have a kind of question or something you're trying to figure out, and you would do searches or open tabs or think out loud, in service of that quest
- but what are the units of a quest? the sites form the waypoints along the journey
- breadcrumbs? breadcrumbs are kind of the thing
- bag? viewport? I mean viewport is very literally what this thing is called on the backend, and it's not a bad metaphor
- open portal? hm
- simply node?
- I'm thinking about treeverse, and how in general browsing tends towards treeshapedness because you open new tabs but there's rarely a convergence
- (although, mostly an aside to much of this page, it would be neat if you could see when clicking on a link that it was a link to a tab you already had open, and then it could just take you there!)
- "a tab you already had open"? or a site you already had open in a tab? hmm
11 linked references
January 22nd, 2023
- Tristan > would be neat if browser asked you after awhile what to call the window
- rimworld vibes - you name your colony after a few turns
April 8th, 2021
- kinda relevant, though half of it is sorta missing the point from my perspective, and it seems optimized for ipad? which...
tinder for tabs
- a specific idea for Designing a better browser\workflow for Twitter & more
February 10th, 2021
- talking with Agrippa Kellum & Raj Thimmiah February 10th, 2021 re Designing a better browser\workflow for Twitter & more / tinder for tabs
- R > my notes on this idea
- Pain point with knowledge mgmt
- Manage Overload
- (always too much stuff)
- Get Long-term Value
- (easy to think)
- multi-armed bandit problem
- example tabs
- twitter, LW, supermemo.guru, roam, hpmor
- can
- assign priorities
- update those over time
- read only part of something and save the rest for later
- stuff starts with random priority, could reassign as stuff shows up
- (already getting a read that these guys are on a totally different wavelength to me)
- like they're more rationalisty vs postrationalisty
- on twitter, threads are very ephemeral
- by adding it to the queue, you could see it in months/years
- need some sort of resolution system, after finishing
- spaced repetition
- you and your research - Hamming
- takes a long time to summarize
- (maybe these guys want to uhhh be a development arm of what Andy Matuschak's doing?)
- M > OHHH you're building the process of creating the cloze deletions into the spaced repetition
- R > supermemo basically already does this, has this workflow
- can have a thousand articles and not go insane
- but the interface, a lot of people don't like
- and learning curve is really steep
- lots of friction - you have to import the articles manually
- but with our solution, you'd do all that directly in the browser
- Mal > I like some bits here, but it's not quite seeing the space the same way I am
- (maybe these guys want to uhhh be a development arm of what Andy Matuschak's doing?)
- A > he's busy
- M > but he needs people to implement stuff
- A > gonna connect stuff
- a tab you can think of as an intention, or a thing I might do
- we don't want to track that all in our heads
- browser gives us one way of storing that
- big list, not particularly ordered
- tinder for tabs lets you view that as a queue, manipulate it quickly, garden it
- tools to prune & maintain
- spaced repetition contribution is like, if we have a cool thing for ingesting a queue, but what actually do we want the datastructure to be
- with a queue, it's better than an ungardened list, but a lot of times when we engage with stuff, the optimal schedule isn't to engage with it now or never, but repeatedly over time
- particularly with memorization or learning
- but also a lot of intentions you might have - a queue is not the right metaphor
- intentions commonly have a repeating structure
- R > have the default unit of acting on something be "do the entire thing", that's terrible
- incrementally write out something in the thread
- can kind of half-ass it, do as much as you want then move on
- third time you look at something is going to be much different
- memory consolidation
- A > I want to interrupt you - you're making a persuasive case about something we haven't heard Malcolm's reaction to
- Agrippa Kellum > our contribution is focused on the juiciness algorithm
- priority
- M > 1-100 priority rating doesn't matter! it's meaningless! juiciness is about what I'm vibing on
- A > crux here
- A > if I spend a day excited about something, there's almost nothing that will reignite that
- I want to program my future self, and I can't. I'm just a slave to whatever's recent
- I'll return eventually somehow to something I was thinking about, and I'll be like "how did I ever let go of this? this was so important"
- I can't keep track of all of the intentions I have and how much they matter to me
- and because of that I have to execute a really shitty algorithm instead
- M > see I'm trusting my own sense of what matters, in each moment
- much shorter time horizon
- wanting to reply more immediately
- M > metaphor for the tinder thing
- M > filter by urls, eg all tweets
- R > explore vs exploit
- how to learn design
- M > Trinley Goldenberg interview with me
- human factors
- user never makes mistake - they do what makes sense given what you gave them
- Agrippa Kellum's notes
- Malcolm spends a lot of time excited about something and wants to follow that. I spend most of my time not excited and then I reconnect with something i was previously excited about, get excited, and scream.
- i want incrementalism as A TOOL FOR MAXIMIZING MY EXPERIENCE OF EXCITEMENT!!! like thats why i want it. so this conversation of the priority queue being *at odds* with excitement is super interesting and making me reframe a lot.
- I notice im finding it really pleasant to write notes / chat contributions without speaking while Raj and Malcolm converse.
- and I'm noticing that it's also not nearly as draining / i'm no longer feeling like I must exit soon.
- R > FOMO
- M >
- don't miss out on what is happening because fixated on fear of missing out on other stuff
- you're always missing stuff
- there's an epic party happening somewhere that you're not at
- burning man thing
- how do I want to spend this week?
- not
- do I want to miss burning man?
- because even if I go to burning man, I'm still missing 99% of burning man
- A >
February 7th, 2021
co-watching / co-learning Doug Engelbart's Mother of All … › paused at 18:30 › QC > fully-frictionless product - omnitext › and receive text that I want to read
- QC > sounds like pocket+anki with tuning
me as project advisor / biz consultant / design jammer / co-visioner
- Agrippa Kellum re some sort of Tinder for Tabs idea inspired by my ideation Designing a better browser\workflow for Twitter & more
- we've just started talking about this
January 5th, 2021
- evolved into Trailblazer
- built API-first
- and noticed it completely changed the way you thought about things depending on which client app you used
- A > tinder for tabs was one of our first experiments
- M > how'd it go?
- A > we didn't really go forward with it...
- we were still trying to figure out what we were
- we were in an accelerator
- couldn't make an adequate biz case for the Roam-like thing
- existing tabs are like, having a bunch of dishes but you can only put them on the dining table or the kitchen counter... no drawers or shelves or cupboards or whatever
- M > people can't see their own frame
- and equivalently, nobody is questioning the basic premise of tabs
- lots of tab-managers
- A > resigned emotions
- thinking about the word "fragment"
- A > I aggressively use mission-control on mac to manage spaces
- each space has a thumbnail
- then I use workona to pull open each of those work contexts
- and the browser workspace is a workspace
- and now it feels like I don't have most of the issues you're talking about re tabs
- though still issues around research etc
- I'm wanting to make a Swift thing to integrate this right into the desktop
- (huh, I'm realizing I could maybe do a GNOME plugin for this)
- remaining things for browser-qua-browser
- scratch stuff
- looking up weather, movie-theater closing
- researching stuff
- fits with trail-based workflows
- M > what about twitter?
- do you have the issues I'm talking about in Designing a better browser\workflow for Twitter & more?
- A > me going into deep convos on twitter has been relatively rare until recently
- I do get tab explosions from that
- A > how do you use twitter?
- M > eg here's a tab that's open...
- I'd like it to kind of fullscreen until I either decide to reply (in which case I may want to access other tabs to thread) or decide not to reply
- I don't want to have it kind of nebulously there, for the most part
- A > model of
- directed vs undirected search
- directed = a specific question, eg "what's a volt?"
- undirected = random pings to the universe, like twitter replies
- M > instapaper & pocket are like Designing a better browser\workflow for Twitter & more but for the non-interactive web
- consume-only
- A > time & context-shifting interactive stream/thread-based content
- M > also similar is like, the mode where email clients show you the next email after you archive, instead of going back to whole inbox
- removes a ton of choice
- A > seems like you maybe want to have a viewer that then has some more opinionated buttons than "like"
- eg "reply but not right now"
- M > let's keep talking, and maybe collab on doing workspace mgmt plugins
- mutual inspiration, you on macOS, me on GNOME
- A > awesome, yeah, I want to switch to linux sooner or later as well
- intention: a long coworking call sometime in February