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How I'm combining extensions to replace Tabs Outliner

4 years ago • updated by 3 years ago • 20

Let me start this by praising how TO is wonderful. I purchased its licence almost 2 years ago and it has been my main productivity and organization tool for sites and tabs. It escalates wonderfully for many hundreds of tabs and its tree structure with node element makes it very easy to organize them all.

It's rly sad that it's abandoned and issues ppl faced almost a decade ago are still around.

I started looking for alternatives, and indeed there's no Chromium or FireFox extension that steps anywhere close to have TO features.

I'm listing here the tools I've been using to get the features I have with TO.

1) Brave browser: it rly annoys me to use Chrome. I hate how Mozilla had crippled FireFox with its Quantum remake. Many awesome addons were killed and its new API is too limited to allow any serious customization of the browser. That made me move to Chromium years ago, but I never wanted to use Chrome. TO forced me to, and now I'll be free from it.

2) TabFern: it's very very limited, but it's the best available. It doesn't support organizing tabs on tree structure, it doesn't have note nodes. But it supports multiple windows and manages all of them from its own window, as TO does. To organize tabs on groups, each group must be in its own window. It supports backup to a normal file saved anywhere on HD, its data uses json. That's great, as we can save backups anywhere we want and edit them manually. Restoring is trouble, as we can't backup-restore single windows and are forced to place all windows on the file. When restoring, all windows on the file are duplicated. But it's open source, it's being slowly developed, and there are a few ppl working on its development.

3) OneTab: its Usability is very very bad, it simply copies all opened tabs to a internal list of links placed on a internal HTML page and then closes them all. This list is stored internally on the browser and there are reports of it corrupting. But it supports exporting and importing them, using plain text for that. By doing so I'm able to keep my tabs organized on an external tool (4). I export each group of tabs to there and delete it from OneTab, and when I wanna open a tab from it I either copy its URL or import the whole group back to OneTab.

4) TheBrain: it's a great mind mapping tool, it's been some years I bought a license for it and now created a new brain for managing tabs. It's a really very powerful tool for organizing complex data, much more powerful them a "simple" tree structure, which most tabs managers don't even have. Each node has 1 or more tabs groups, composed of OneTab list of tabs. I either browse its structure or search for anything I want, then either take a URL or copy a full list and import to OneTab.

Yeah, it requires combining 2 extensions and 1 external tool, and requires a very lot of clicks to move tabs around. TO is much more comfortable to use, but it also has its lots of issues and lack of support.

Organizing tabs on a Brain structure is much more powerful than a tree structure, and I believe I won't wanna turn back once I have all my tabs moved to it!!

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4 years ago

I created an account and signed in here just so I could say thank you to you, Hikari!

I've been trying out Tabs Outliner for a few days now, and was considering paying for the upgrade. In the meantime, I've also spent a good bit of time putting together some comments and screenshots for this developer. I so appreciate his/her thorough documentation, and the massively comprehensive feature set!

Thank goodness I needed to look for a bit more info on one issue, or I would not have seen your post, and the evidence that TO has been abandoned. You've saved me a ton of time and effort.

But especially, thank you for outlining how you're trying to replace TO. It's so great to see there are people out there who are generous enough to try to help their fellow web users! Most people would click off this forum and be pissed off that they can't have what they want once they saw there was no support. I'm looking forward to checking out your suggestions.

Finally, thanks for the reminder that not every human is selfish, a much-needed bit of positivity these days. Stay well!

4 years ago

lol tnx for the kind words, I was indeed hoping to have somebody else add their suggestions for alternatives.

Indeed it's very sad it's abandoned, after seeing how powerful it was 7 years ago by reading old posts.

U pointed something important I hadn't thought, the extension is still available on Chrome store and its licence can be bought.

Indeed, after I had bought it, I think the author had never made a post here. And I'm sure there was no update ever since.

It starts being scam to keep the premium edition available for buying, when we have no support and restore feature is broken.

4 years ago

On chrome extension page is says that Tabs Outliner is on version 1.4.137 and was last updated 30.04.2020?

4 years ago

Indeed... I see no changelog explaining what was changed and he remains not logging in the forum. I wonder if he had fixed anything, or just uploaded a dummy new version just so that it appears to be updated and more ppl buy the license.

4 years ago

TO still works great on Chrome/Chromium.

I don't know if it's actively developed though, and it doesn't work on Brave.

4 years ago

@Boris: What about just now (for the past few days)?

4 years ago

Check out the BrainTool extension on the Chrome Web Store. Its different in philosophy but similar enough to TO that it might meet your needs. (Its also evolving pretty rapidly.)

4 years ago

In short I am using Tab Session Manager, Smart Session and TabFern. Reviewing BrainTool.

4 years ago

Well, well... I am not sure what happened, but I updated Chromium to the latest version and the browser said that TO extension is damaged. Needed to be "repaired". Went ahead with the repair process and it now works again. BUT! Invites me to pay for the extended features again. It does not believe I already did that in the past. Any way to rectify this?

Not to mention that I suddenly started experiencing the multiplication of tabs in groups. Maybe I must stop Chromium from restoring the tabs on startup.

4 years ago

I have given up. Tabs Outliner is abandoned.

Now I use BrainTool. It's closer to bookmark manager than TO, but that is actually a good thing. With TO it was very easy to lose your tabs (e.g. you open a folder full of tabs and close the tabs from Chrome and boom they're gone). Braintool doesn't try to take care tabbing that much, though it has Tab Grouping for example. What I really like is the clean hierarchical structure, with voluntary notes attached to each bookmark. And it makes a simple org-mode file that's accessible via text editor or online editor (https://organice.200ok.ch/). Developer is nice and actively developing the plugin, check it out.

4 years ago

I have actually taken up using this tool and find it very useful

4 years ago

@pswiatki that used to happen to me a lot, TO corrupts and we need to reinstall it, then reactivate it. Just enter the URL provided on the license and it will be activated. That works as long as the domain and host are kept paid.

I'm gonna look BrainTool, but it seems to be more a bookmarks manager. For that, Start.me is awesome. Tabs management is very different, it for when we open many links at once and need some time to look all of them, and once closed we won't go back again. And we need to organize them on semantic groups.

For sites we visit often or that we expect to visit again on the future, bookmark manager is better. In example, I have a board on Start.me for all forums I use. I have a widget with links for profile/notification pages where I see any thread that had new posts, and some widgets where I organize most relevant threads that I wanna keep track to. There's no need to keep all that opened on tabs, even suspended. When I open many threads at once, I just open a new window on TabFern and move these tabs to there, and go reading and closing them.

Also don't forget about RSS feed. Sites we visit often, it's easier to keep track of them by RSS so we see at 1 place all new posts. NewsBlur has some annoying issues but also some great features for organizing posts that are relevant and taking away posts we don't wanna see.

4 years ago

@Hikari - thank you very much. I perhaps forgot that I actually got something in a form of an URL along with the license. It seemed to somehow work "automagically". I will look for it in my email.

Still - quite sad TO developer did abandon his werk of art. So many people would be happy to support him (also financially, I presume) if he wished to continue.

4 years ago

@Hikari: OH YEAH! That's what I was hoping for. Got it all back. Thank you so much.

I sort of expected major issues with TO at this time, but let me put it in a separate thread.

4 years ago

Last years he was posting he was complaining that few ppl were buying, so yeah not many are willing to support him. Even more after what he did, nobody should pay for it even if he'd post again.

4 years ago

Well... I guess he made it a bit too easy to get most of the features one may need. So, why bother paying. Or, he should have made it donationware, etc. with some prompt popping up from time to time encouraging to give support (not necessarily a fixed price). VB-Audio (voicemeeter) guy does just that and - I think - he does not complain.

So, if out TO author got frustrated or something - maybe he should re-think his busi9niess strategy.. hmmm....

3 years ago

Dear @Hikari,

There is as option for [Tab Session Manager]
* https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-session-manager/iaiomicjabeggjcfkbimgmglanimpnae

This advanced a lot in terms of development, with numerous useful features.

There is the synchronization option through Google Drive.

Another giant problem to manage tabs is synchronization with Android.

Despite automatic synchronization of favorites and historical in Chrome, it is very difficult a decent management of sessions between the browser on the desktop and then on the Android.

I skirted this situation using me from the Dius browser.

I've been using DIIGO.com for over 10 years, a great bookmark online.
In addition, DIIGO.com accepts, in your Android browser, the use of bookmarklets, which in turn allows the use of https://hypothes.is, the best tool for [Annotate The Web, With Anyone, Anywhere ].

[PT/BR]

Há como opção o [Tab Session Manager]
* https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-session-manager/iaiomicjabeggjcfkbimgmglanimpnae

Este avançou muito em termos de desenvolvimento, com inúmeras funcionalidades úteis.

Há a opção de sincronização por meio do GooGle Drive.

Outro problema gigante para se gerenciar tabs é a sincronização com o AndroID.

Apesar da sincronização automática de favoritos e históricos no ChroMe, é muito difícil um gerenciamento decente de sessões entre o navegador no DeskTop e depois no AndroID.

Eu contornei esta situação utilizando-me do navegador da DiiGo.

Eu utilizo há mais de 10 anos o DiiGo.com, um ótimo bookMark onLine.
Além disto, o DiiGo.com aceita, em seu navegador do AndroID, o uso de bookMarkLets, o qual por sua vez permite a utilização do https://hypothes.is, a melhor ferramenta para [Annotate the web, with anyone, anywhere].

3 years ago

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/freshstart-cross-browser/nmidkjogcjnnlfimjcedenagjfacpobb

3 years ago

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabli/igeehkedfibbnhbfponhjjplpkeomghi

https://www.gettabli.com/tabli-usage.html#save-format

(...)

Saved Windows are Stored as Bookmark Folders
Finally, it's worth mentioning how Saved Windows and Tabs are stored. After saving a window, if you open the Chrome Bookmark Manager, you will see a structure something like this:

Every saved window is saved as a Bookmarks Folder under "Other Bookmarks/Tabli Saved Windows" with a folder name that is the name that you specified when saving the window. Within that folder every saved tab is stored as a bookmark. It's important to note that these are ordinary bookmarks and bookmark folders; there is no extra hidden state. While I don't recommend it, you may use the Bookmarks Editor to make changes, and these changes will be reflected the next time you start Chrome or force a reload of Tabli via the Extensions page.

(...)