Daily Browsing Tab Count
We all have our daily things to check on the web, from blogs to forums, stats to e-mail, which got me wondering how many tabs does the average person (geek) have open on their first/main browse. For some, like me, that's the morning with a cup of tea/coffee. For others, it's part of an evening ritual after work.
Personally, my usual morning routine has me looking at about 14 tabs, consisting of:
- Twitter - Micro-blogging. Seeing what the new day brings for those I follow. I should add that this is usually followed up with a visit to HelloTxt for my mass update of Twitter, Jaiku, Meemi, Beemood and Pownce.
- Wordpress Stats - Visitor stats. Eventually I want to switch to Mint for this.
- Google Reader - RSS. Longer posts I middle click into a new tab in case I want to bookmark for later.
- Gmail - Email. Usually this determines if I have to check extra sites or not that morning. For example, Basecamp e-mails will have me going there.
- akamike - My own blog. I have feeds of the comments and posts in case something happens but I still like to check to make sure it's still up and running.
- .net Magazine - Forum. Web development talk.
- Boagworld - Forum. More web dev talk.
- UKCS - Forum and Stats. I play Counter-Strike: Source with these guys/gals.
- Gaming World - Forum. Gaming community.
- Feedburner - Subscriber stats. Most mornings the stats are being updated when I visit (i.e. showing 0), so I usually have to check back later.
- Facebook - Social Networking. Checking my news feed and to see if anything significant is happening with friends (if they haven't mentioned on Twitter).
- Campfire - Chat. Rolled Limited uses a number of 37signals products for our day to day communications and project/client management. This tab stays open all day.
- Last.fm - Music. Checking my recommendations for anything interesting while I think about what to listen to first.
- DeviantART - Art. Checking the updates (art, journals, comments) of those I watch.
This list has increased due to the forums, which I am trying to be more active on. All of these I'll go back and check several times a day, especially Twitter and Google Reader. Sometimes I add Digg, LinkedIn and Flickr to the mix, but not very often.
Gilbert Pellegrom mentioned on twitter that he uses Netvibes to check all his feeds, making it a one-stop-spot for his daily web needs.
So, I ask my readers: How many tabs (or windows) do you find yourself opening when you do your "main" daily browse? Are you like Gilbert and have everything feeding through a personal homepage? Answer in the comments or, better yet, make a post on your own blog with links to your dailies!
9 Comments
Cat
Can I go with too many?! Mine is between 12 and 16 depending on the forums I'm active in a certain week.
MIne includes the usual suspects of gmail, Facebook, Wikipedia, blog stats, my blog, my tumblr blog, Last.fm, Twitter, Google Reader and too many forums!
Mike
Haha, imo it's only too many if your browser starts crashing ;)
Gilbitron
Thanks for the mention Mike. Generally I find between Netvibes (the abundance of widgets and unlimited feeds) and Digsby, all my daily reading/chatting needs are satisfied.
Darren
do you open them all up manually or have a folder in firefox that opens them all automatically? I have a 'start folder' with all my main tabs in it which just opens everything at once so I can quickly scan through them
Mike
I open them all individually, since Firefox would die if I tried to open them all in one go (mostly due to gmail). I do have my work related bookmarks in a folder though, so I can get right to it!
Jamaaludeen Khan
I like your idea Darren! I'm going to do that right now! I actually already have a "Daily" folder in Firefox, but I just need to get some more stuff in there, and use the "Open all in tabs" option. SWEET!
Steve
I use a Firefox plugin called Session Manager to save all my tabs in different "sessions" and open them when I want. I don't like to have them all open every time I start my browser.
Iaman
I tend to only have about 3-6 tabs open at any given point in time. I have two open right now, and that's only because I have a playlist on muxtape playing right now.
I suppose I mostly have such a small amount because of the convenience of Opera's Speed Dial feature. If I *NEED* to check a certain page, it's probably in my speed dial so I can simply CTRL+T and then CTRL+WHATEVER NUMBER IT IS to get to it rather quickly. It obviously doesn't work for specific things on a site, but I tend to not care about the time I spend navigating sites.
Fahad
I usually only open about 8 or 10 tabs. Just the stats page, my own site, gmail, and couple of others. Not much. I dont really interact in forums a lot. But if I have research to do then I work with many tabs(10-15). :)