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Sync Tabs Tree
Hi,
Is it possible to sync tabtree between computers?
There's one extension that write sessions (tabs) into bookmarks, so it will be sync'ed automatically.
Customer support service by UserEcho
It is planed.
Meantime you can export you tree in some Google Doc document, along with all notes and marks, and share it between all you devices this way.
To export, all, firs expand all nodes, then drag root node to google doc, then you can undone nodes expand by clicking undo expand all.
But how do you import from a Google document or a .docx file?
Tab Cloud Chrome Extension does this. Tab Cloud was my primary tool for this until finding Tab Outliner. I would love to have the Tab Tree synced across devices. Starting with PC's and then to Mobile Devices. The Chrome sync native to chrome is terrible. However, using the chrome account settings and/or gmail settings the way TabCloud does it is pretty cool. Please let us know if this could be a possible feature. Syncing would make this a killer app. I'd also like to be able to turn tabs quickly into diigo bookmarks, wrike tasks and The Brain Thoughts.
@Vladyslav
Looking for a cookbook on migrating data from one Chrome instance to another. The GoogleDocs method above doesn't capture all the information, many of the links are flat text (page titles no URL data) plus no distinction between groups windows etc.
So separately from the Sync (bit of a challenge I'm sure) how about an easy backup/restore process?
You already find this, but will list there the link for other users:
This is how to backup or move the TO database to other PC:
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/tabs-outliner-support-group/eKubL9Iw230/discussion
This method is of course only a temporal workaround till there will not be implemented better solution. Backup/syncing through Google Drive is planned.
@All & Vladyslav: I use the tip of the above link how to share the data across computers more or less easily:
[...Just expand all nodes, save the view through Ctrl-S and you will be able to drag hierarchies from this file to some other Tabs Outliner instance, or just use this file on its own....] - Note: important to save as a hole website not just HTML. So, don't change the default.
I save the expanded (important) tree onto a memory stick and copy the subtrees one by one (still the lack of multichoice) to other current session trees on other devices. Until now - unfortunately - it is not possible to copy just the hole session tree. As soon as it would be possible to have more than just one 'current session' this workaround would be very handy and a quick solution.
I would copy the hole freshest tree by drag&drop from the opened file to the TO-Window and delete the old 'current tree' (the one which was already inside the TO-Window, becoming obsolete at the same moment, when I paste the fresh one aside). Of course before starting new sessions on that computer, but even if later, I would just have to take care to move the new sessions subfolders to my fresh tree, before deleting.
This would be more than a workaround, I would have my current data in my pocket on a stick instead of in a cloud, transfering at ease. But will have to save on a stick or network (or dropbox, google drive, cloud)... again and again, before I leave any computer. So for me a cloud solution is at best, because I change a lot, but I would like to have the choice.
One may answer to put everythin once in a group folder instead of copying subfolders one by one, but the group behaviour properties will inherit on everything then and this is probably not desired. As well to get them out of the group folder would imply the same, drag and drop one by one, due to the lack of a multichoice.
So my conclusion or suggestion concerning the major priority is or to add the multiple 'current session' ability or multichoice or both. Suitable to work then in an accurate manner across computers, while waiting for an implemented cloud solution, which is probably more work to realize.
But I am already happy as well about what you have achieved until now, Vlady! Thanks again!
dg
> cloud solution is probably more work to realize.
Really so, but i hope to finish soon.
Until that, unfortunately, only the most critical bugs will be fixed (and unfortunately so is happens with every new Chrome release....).
Okay, thanks for your reply - well fixed apparently, my TO works stable, no complains. Have fun working!
dg
By the way, what monthly fee will be too big for you for this,
and also what you will consider a bargain price?
At least somebody still wait : ))
Hard working on this.
Yet first version of this feature maybe will not be so rich as you describe.
Do you really need to have all devices in one outline?
I plan this meantime as separate, yet accessible from the web, trees, one tree per device, updated in real time. Almost ready.
And as for mobile - as i know the Chrome for mobile does not allow extensions. So not sure how it will be possible to make mobile tabs online.
kickstarter is a good idea, i am actually planing it, but for a more rich offline features, if the synchronize will not give any serious funds to enable me make this a full time job.
As an alternative business model, you could consider doing Patreon like the extension Sprucemarks and its creator does:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sprucemarks/fakeocdnmmmnokabaiflppclocckihoj
https://www.patreon.com/nightmode/
Great! I am glad to see that you are still working on a "sync" feature. If you need help testing I would be willing to help. Thanks for all your hard work! BeN32Public |at| hotmail.com
Nice to hear that the synchronization is planned and in test phase! I was too TabCloud-user but after using tabsoutliner I was sold to use it. Only missing part is the sync between sessions/ other comp. Keep up the really good work!
Original plan was to finally publish it this year, still hope to do so....
You could enable this option only if a one-time donation is given, as a suggestion. Using google drive ala tab cloud makes the most sense: I know many people who are afraid of tying their bookmarks to proprietary services that might shut down in a couple of years.
I'm a programmer who'd be happy to join the beta testing team to when it reaches that point...
Hope soon some more news you will see in the extension itself.
Through you can easily find in the Chrome profile the text dumps of the tree in the JSON format. And add this folder to some cloud backup service. This files will be possible to import directly in the tree soon. Autobackup configured from extension directly to GoogleDrive will also be soon released.
Worth to note that you cannot write files from Chrome extension anywhere on disk. Only inside some special places in the Chrome profile - and this is already done.
Best,
Vladyslav
Anyway, is there a way to accelerate the development of sync features? I personally would donate up to $150 to this cause. If you push an update for your extension that will show a banner on top of the extension window (of course, closable and with an option not to show it anymore) pointing to the site where a user could pledge a donation for that specific feature — as many as 100 users out of all your user base could donate enough for you not to work for a couple of months to finish all the much-requested features.
The advice is good, i plan to try exactly this.
Preparing now a fundraising campaign.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229782
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226731
Thank's for a links
When setting up your Indiegogo campaign, please consider specifying what funding goal would result in changing the Tabs Outliner license to a Free Software license (preferably AGPL or GPL). I did read that you are unlikely to change the license. I would like you to reconsider this. If your primary concern is financial, there are many ways to open the source code and still be able to generate money. I would be happy to talk with you about this.
Thanks,
david
--
P.S.
Please indicate that you've read this by posting a quick reply.
There is also many similar tools in a same field, direct competitors, with near half a million users count, who will be more then happy to take the sources, and just publish them as updated version of their own tool.
Sorry I haven't replied yet. I've had a few unexpected things come up. I'm planning on replying with ideas for generating money this coming week. BTW, do you have an idea of how much money you need to generate with Tabs Outliner in order to be able to continue with the development work? The answer to this question might help in creating a viable strategy to generate money.
-- david
I believe you might have a pessimistic view of your own software, TO, which is actually very good and in many ways better than concurrent extensions that have more users. TO delivers already a lot of concrete features today, and has a big potential to be a true killer extension for anyone that use extensively internet for researching and reading stuffs about many things.
I personally would be happy to pay a small fee for it (5-10$?) if it was a paying extension (maybe a free + a paying one could also suit your case), and/or contribute to fix issues I find and improve with functionality I think are missing (such as cloud sync) if it would be open-source.
Concerning open-source, wikipedia has a very extensive list of possible business models which have proven to work for some projects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_o...
You should also realize that even if you would open-source TO, it would still be possible to actually sell it. It may raise a few concerns:
- A user could always get it from the repository and package it himself before importing it in his browser. However this would be limited to power users only. Many people, even geeks who have the skills for it, would still prefer paying a reasonable fee and have the extension available in literally less than a minute with just a few clicks, rather than going through the hassle of actually doing the packaging (even more if it involves compilation) and install manually an extension in the browser. Also, people are respectful of open-source works, especially when the software they get in return can provide a service as amazing as TO can already do.
- Yes, there is always a risk of someone cannibalizing it to make it available for free, or worst to make it paying. However, if TO assert its position as the true source of the software from the beginning, and if TO embrace the spirit of open-source at large where people can actually improve the software directly, then it will be recognized as the original software by people and media. That's not something the copycats could have.
- Someone can fork the project and build a better extension. Yeah, that's one thing to accept in open-source. But it should also be understood that it happens only when there is a big clash of ideas within a community of developers. If you manage well your community, and make the contribution rules clear from the beginning, then you can avoid such clashes and forks. This is limited to your social skills, but good books already exist on it (such as The Art of Community from Jono Bacon, the former community manager of Ubuntu). Also, if you choose the right license, even if someone fork TO you would still be able to take their improvements and add them to your TO. Indeed, this work both ways, otherwise that would not be fair. Finally on this subject, complete open-source development models are based on forking: github is a prime exemple. Here, people fork massively to add the things they want in a project, and then propose them back (known as "pull request") to the original project which can accept the modifications or not.
- A concurrent extension can "steal" some code. Again, if you choose the right license you can avoid this (and if a concurrent still do steal code without contributing/open-sourcing back its modifications, then you know you can have the law to back you up). If a concurrent open-source extension does this in a way permitted by the licenses of both projects, then this is considered to be a good thing. Because once again, it can work both ways :).
About the choice of license, I would suggest you to avoid the ones which do not protect you enough in terms of "stealing" and forking. The MIT or BSD licenses for instance are very bad at protecting you from that.
As you are not making a library but a final software for end-user, even the most "extreme" licenses such as GPL would be acceptable, depending on your vision of how you want and think TO can develop itself in the future.
LGPL-style licenses are very often a good compromise.
http://www.incomediary.com/ultimate-guide-how-to-m...
Personally, if this were implemented using https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/storage (so that it's built into chrome sync), it would be worth 100 USD to me. Of course, there are many edge cases that make it difficult (different computers synced to the same account my have different sets of tabs, and I'd want the Tabs Outliner solution to be intuitive and robust. That's a bit of a steep commitment, but I love my tabs :) I'm others would be willing to commit to something like "half now, half when it's done". To be clear, I'd be willing to commit this to you whether or not you open source the extension--somewhat as a thank you for your work so far, and as motivation to make it that much better.
Somewhat relatedly, how do you accept donations?
Just my 2 cents.
Thanks again!
Dan
Or buy the code base off him, FOSS it and pay another dev
In order to sync between computers/devices, a good idea to ease the development would be naming each computer and not mixing the tabs between computers. Just add in the list a tree for each computer (similarly as chrome recent tabs, they separate by computer device)
by the way, my suggestion would be having the paid version between 4 to 10 dollars.. (with lifetime updates)
and improve the advertisement and make a easier to find name..
thankfully I found your tool, but many others might not.. I think your tool is amazing!
Just wanted to tell that Google Drive Backup feature has saved my butt today. Thank you, friend! :-)
There is just one step left to integrate the tabs from the other computers into the main TO window, but it's really a minor usability issue now, as these tabs are, in fact, already accessible via Backup tab in options.
I have just bought the paid version; because I expected a feature of syncing between computers. But it seems it is not there. Are there any plans to implement it?
It sure seems like it (see my reply to Dan for more info).
In the meantime you can manually sync fairly easily with the automatic backup feature.
And how do you do that? I'm using export / import, but I would like to sync with the automatic Drive backup. Don't knnow how to restore these backups, tho.
+1 for the sync feature.
If you do not have time to do it in foreseeable future, please release the code under GPL (or a similar license) and publish it online, so community can take over.
People that have supported you so far (including myself), are grateful in advance ;)
If I have two workstations, using the same Google account, both backing up using my google drive... are they not able to just open the most recent backup that has been save each time TO opens? Would this not effectively be the same thing as sync? (I guess it could get sorta messy if both workstations are being used at once, but in my case, that is never the case)
TO doesn't seem to be doing this though... It must be opening some locally stored data, since when I open TO on a workstation that I haven't used in a while, I am just shown the tabs I had open the last time I used that workstation... Yet, my recent google drive backups in the Options section (which are much more recent than what is shown in TO) are available to be viewed or deleted (Therefore the recent data is available to TO)...
I suppose I could just manually delete what's currently in TO, and drag in a Google Drive backup... but couldn't this be automated for me? Or is this what's under development? My sense is that this isn't whats under development, but instead a more elegant solution that doesn't use Drive at all... (How easy would it be to implement a temporary solution that loads the local data, but then replaces it with any more recent google drive backups if they exist? This could be made optional of course, for those who actually prefer to have multiple sets of tabs that they are maintaining.)
Agreed with most of what's said here. Ability to sync parts of a tree (not the entire tree ideally) between various computers would be incredibly handy. I've opened backups from other computers before and manually copied them over, but it's difficult to maintain when tabs change on both ends.
This function and ability to move around multiple tabs at once (http://tabsoutliner.userecho.com/topics/13-select-and-move-multiple-nodes-at-once/) are the only two features preventing this extension from being perfect.
I also wanted to say that I'd be willing to contribute development assistance like some others, if the option to open the code is available.
THIS SHOULD BE MARKED AS COMPLETED.
Hi Erick,
Am I missing something. I have it loaded on two different computers and no syncing is happening. I have gone through everything I can think of in settings. Maybe I am missing something?
Thanks,
Flack
Everyone that knows sensibly about these kinds of projects knows that they are only quasi-economic ventures for the most part for the developer and most are less than that. Some projects do grow into a fully economically justified effort for the developer. But, more often than not, they are a combination of a passion project combined with wanting to be paid just enough to make it a little less painful for all the hours they are putting into the effort which includes both development and support (the latter the part developers always like the least)
I know some of have raised this before with things like IndieGoGo being brought up and a few other things. Personally, I would keep it simpler. Just put it out as an amount of money you need to be raised to add this feature. Attach that to the most simple way to get a fundraising bar possible and let those of us who want this feature kick into the pot until it reaches 100%. If that takes a month or if it takes a year, I do not think it is really tragic.
Also, I would push back on earlier comments that it rests on the developer to promote the fundraiser. That thinking is based on the notion that the developer is doing this fully based on the economic value of the project which surely is not the case here. If the developer is willing to put out a number it takes to get syncing in place, I think it falls to all of us to put a little bit of effort to help that succeed as well as chipping in financially. I saw just this kind of thing first hand for another small utility I use in the Windows environment and it worked out very well for all involved. The community got the update we wanted and the developer got paid some money for his time. Undoubtedly, he worked at an hourly rate that he would have never done if it was just pure economics but paid enough to at least keep his wife a little bit happier for all the evening hours he is dumping into the utility after coming home from a full day of work.
Cheers,
Flack
isnt this already done with google drive sync?
You can do this manually but it does not work automatically. Think about how a Chrome profile on the Chrome browser automatically keeps any added bookmark to all computers where you have that same Chrome profile account.
I started using TO (from TabCloud, which is also cumbersome to save/sync) recently, and am finding it's just too much of a hassle to have to click TO Options, Backup Tab, find the most recent one, Click View, then drag tree root to TO Main Tab root. Actually, it's much more than that that you have to do to sync, you also have to first delete the tree in the TO Main Tab, so you don't have duplicates. Seems like this could be done automatically. Throw away all backups except the latest (after all, we have chrome history available to us for finding old pages), update the backup in the background as you work, and do all the steps above automatically when Chrome opens.
Hi Vladyslav Volovyk
I'd like to suggest two improvements that are very easy to update and will be hugely appreciated by some advanced users (like you and me).
The first would be show a header listing all the "DIRECT" child groups for every group. Like the attached image that I have attached to this post. That was an example on how things can get difficult to keep track without this "header". If my group has a lot of groups inside of it, It is difficult to keep track of them. If you list them at the beginning and create link that will move to that group when clicked, it will be much easier to keep track of them.
the other suggestion is:
When we copy a group or window, it would be awesome to have an aditional type of "copy" option available in the menu. Some link that would be leading straight to opening that tabsoutliner window/group from an external aplication such as OneNote (since its on the same computer) or any app that allows to paste a link.
For example. I right click on the "group", then select "copy group link", then paste it on OneNote 2013, or word, then when I click on this link from onenote or other app it would open the group/window that i clicked. This would be quite handful to organize tabs related to projects that we are working on.. or even being able to close all opened groups and reopen again later.
please let me know if you like any of my suggestions! :) I'd love to have those features
Just checking, has this ever been solved? Probable my second biggest need (after the crashing duplication thing)?
Tree Style Tab in Firefox gets the basic job done. It's not even close to Tabs Outliner, and I'd like something better, but it's the best I've found so far.