+30
Under review

Preserving Tab History for each tab when saving, either auto or manually

Mayank Mehrotra 11 years ago updated by tabsoutdbes1 9 years ago 9
This feature is especially needed when Chrome crashes or one shuts down Chrome through the Windows Task Manager.

I'd like to be able to restore my tabs that I had open, but ensure that the tab history is intact when restored. I want to be able to go back in the history of a tab to check previously visited sites. This needs to be done especially when auto-saving a session, so that one can be rest assured that their browsing session remains completely intact even if Chrome crashes (and the "Restore Session" button does not come up).


Answer

Answer
Under review

Unfortunately, this is a most common request, yet it cannot be done now because of the Chrome limitations. It's impossible meantime to restore back and forward history from extension. So there is no any extension in the Chrome Store that can do so.


The Chrome API's to support this are currently in development. I plan to take advantage of them as soon as they're complete.


To monitor its progress please stare there issues:


https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=41321&can=1&q=restore%20tab%20history%20from%20extension&colspec=ID%20Pri%20M%20Iteration%20ReleaseBlock%20Cr%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20OS%20Modified


https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=14737&can=1&q=restore%20tab%20history%20from%20extension&colspec=ID%20Pri%20M%20Iteration%20ReleaseBlock%20Cr%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20OS%20Modified

Please stare them anyway, this will help to raise their importance for a Chrome team.

Answer
Under review

Unfortunately, this is a most common request, yet it cannot be done now because of the Chrome limitations. It's impossible meantime to restore back and forward history from extension. So there is no any extension in the Chrome Store that can do so.


The Chrome API's to support this are currently in development. I plan to take advantage of them as soon as they're complete.


To monitor its progress please stare there issues:


https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=41321&can=1&q=restore%20tab%20history%20from%20extension&colspec=ID%20Pri%20M%20Iteration%20ReleaseBlock%20Cr%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20OS%20Modified


https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=14737&can=1&q=restore%20tab%20history%20from%20extension&colspec=ID%20Pri%20M%20Iteration%20ReleaseBlock%20Cr%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20OS%20Modified

Please stare them anyway, this will help to raise their importance for a Chrome team.

FreshStart Session Manager somehow manages to preserve tab history...maybe you could ask that developer how they did it and implement it yourself? I cannot use Tabs Outliner if it will not preserve the history of each tab, but I really need something like Tabs Outliner to help me keep my tabs in check.
It use bookmarks to save tabs. In recent Chrome seems they really save tab history, that's interesting.
Through it's not understandable how to implement this without using the bookmarks. If anybody know this it will be cool to hear.
Has there been any progress on this feature? I was reading that Chrome has allowed some (possibly limited) functionality to preserve an individual tab's webtrails / individual history.

Is this a feature that you can / are planning to introduce into your application soon?
In December I tweeted Session Buddy (another extension) and they said "Current Chrome extension API doesn't support this, unfortunately."  Do you know if the update was after December?
Where did you reading so? 
I cannot find any API that allow restoration of tab history.
Here's the tweet and reply: https://twitter.com/session_buddy/status/550185621956734978
Would the following link be of any use to develop this functionality: https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/sessions?

It states that it can retrieve history, but I'm not certain it can retain the webtrails within each individual tab... Here's the underlying discussion on the topic within the Chromium development community: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=14737.

Any chance this can work...?

Thanks, much.
+2
When I first started using Tabs Outliner I wished it was able to remember tab history. In fact, I even held off moving my workflow to TO while I thoroughly investigated other solutions that would provide the benefits of TO and tab history.

Eventually the benefits of TO (even without tab history) compelled me to jump whole hog into using it. And now after using TO daily for quite some time, I suspect tab history (as it's typically been implemented) is something that we actually don't want.

The way I worked around not having tab history was to open every link that was interesting to me in a new node (tab). This provides for an ability to search through the history of all tabs whenever a node search is executed. Additionally it allows one to visually browse tab history -- including being able to browse tab history in context because new tabs can automatically open as child nodes. I don't know of any tab tool in any browser that can provide both of these features.

So basically you can have tab history in TO (and more) by simply changing how you open new tabs.

One of the cons of implementing tab history (as it's typically been implemented -- not searchable and not visually browsable) is that it will result in dead text. This is diametrically opposite of what we want. Search this page http://brainstormsw.com/outliner/competitor-comparison/ for "dead text" to understand that phrase.

Additionally, tab history will likely bloat the TO database for many people (saving undesired parts of tab history). This is a bad thing. We want TO to run as lean and thus as quick as possible.

Yes, we want a tab history. What we ideally want is a curated tab history. And we want a curated tab history without the effort that goes into curating. Since curating won't happen with zero effort, we want to find the sweet spot where we are applying the minimal effort possible that results in a curated tab history with much of the chaff winnowed.

Winnowing much of the chaff in a tab's history *is* possible with minimal effort with TO. I have achieved this. And this is coming from a tab hoarder who abhors spending time organizing and categorizing data. Someone who used to use Firefox with sometimes 800 tabs open and thousands of *unnamed/uncategorised* saved Session Manager sessions. Now I spend just a small amount of time quickly labeling, moving, and sometimes deleting nodes and node branches *before* saving the nodes. The result has been better searchability and visibility into my tab history than I've ever had with any other browser configuration.

I do imagine people have other workflows that might work better for them (probably the people who are better organizers than I am). To each their own. If tab history does make it into TO please make it possible to disable this feature.


Thanks,
david