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The Future of Tabs Outliner

Tony Confrey 2 роки тому оновлений 2 роки тому 4

Hello Vladyslav,

I was a premium user of Tabs Outliner a few years back. I very much liked its hierarchical tree model and browser control. Particularly for that point in time it was a very nice piece of work.

Recently I've been developing a quite different tool but with a similar tree structured data model and ability to control the browser. I've been focusing on building not marketing but have generated some enthusiastic support from users even in advance of the 1.0 version. I had some TO users request imports into BrainTool, my extension, so I implemented an ability to do that.

From surveying the activity on the Google Group and userecho site it seems like the Tabs Outliner project is somewhat moribund, but with a number of active and often frustrated users. As you probably know Tabs Outliner will stop working at the end of the year. I think BrainTool is a good match for those peoples needs and having them as users might enable it to evolve faster than it would otherwise.

Are you interested in open sourcing or selling Tabs Outliner? I would like to offer a migration path to BrainTool and the potential for the TO source code to be ported to Manifest V3 such that it can continue to work in 2023.

Thanks for your consideration,

Tony Confrey

I just discovered this extension and it's changed my life and I use it exclusively. I also upgraded and now you're saying it will be gone by year end? The upgrade fee is worth it even for a year for an amazing tool the developer created but I'm terribly sad to lose this. 
Does your (@Tony) extension replicate Tabs Outliner? I would gladly pay a fee to support this. I also use Tabs Outliner as a BrainTool so look forward to seeing how you develop your own version.
Any chance I can test your tool Tony?

Holy cow's I just searched BrainTool on chrome extension and it looks AMAZING!

I'm downloading it and testing it out

Honestly Tony I think adding the notes on the side is brilliant and was thinking the exact same thing integrating notes.

I would love to have my subscription transferred over as I literally just acquired it a minute ago haha. But gladly play for a new one though I'll have to look into your subscription model, I'm not fond of monthly and perfer one of fee

Damn, Tony your extension deals with bookmarks but I use Tabs Outliner as a bookmark organiser itself so it doesn't fulfil my needs and doesn't have same functionality, why is Tabs Outliner ending? :(

I would love if someone took over, I would pay for another key if you could replicate Tabs Outliner, the functionality it has is amazing 

Hi PW. That was a rollercoaster thread!


To be clear I'm not saying TO is ending but that Google is discontinuing the API (Manifest V2) it uses to communicate with the browser. See the link in my original note to Vlad and the key timeline image inserted below. Without significant work to port to the new Manifest V3 TO will stop working.

As you've seen, my model is that BrainTool will be free for use up to 300 saved items (its currently totally free for now). Your data is stored in plain text and available to you at any time, so no lock in. The tool is still very much under development and I'm actively seeking feedback on direction. While its not my main focus I hope to cover the session management aspect of TO at some point this year at which point it should be fully feature compatible. 

I don't understand what you mean by using TO as a bookmark organizer, IMO BrainTool should be able to meet you needs there. I know a number of TO users have successfully made the transition. I'd love to hear more and suggest you follow up on the BT discussion forum: https://groups.google.com/u/0/g/braintool-discussion