Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs

(charliegerard.dev)

148 points | by speckx 3 days ago

16 comments

  • drfloyd51 4 hours ago
    This isn’t as useless as it seems. It is a visual representation of how old the tab is. And I control what “old” is.

    To put it another way, it helps me recognize which tabs I am using. And which I am saving for later without having to evaluate the content of the tab.

    One tweak… the coverage percentage can it be adjustable? Max = 100% looses all information about the pages contents, except the title.

    Also also… if the images can be made translucent… you can make old timey effects like yellowing and decay.

    • paid_dot_expert 4 hours ago
      It also creates a human feedback loop. It will train you to instinctively not keep old tabs open as you need to deal with the plants.
      • johnea 4 hours ago
        Why would you not want to keep them open?
        • zetanor 3 hours ago
          If you have tabs sitting there unused for days, isn't that just a bookmark?
          • ninkendo 2 hours ago
            Or a history item!

            People forget about browser history. It’s super useful.

            My technique: I open tabs just like anyone else, and when I feel like “that’s too many tabs”, I just close them all. Every one of them.

            If I need them again? Open up the browser history. It’s searchable. It has everything. Use it!

            • kccqzy 2 hours ago
              At work I’m basically required to use Chrome and Chrome does not keep browser history beyond 90 days. That is useless. An open tab can easily last more than 90 days and survive restarts.
            • tcfhgj 2 hours ago
              > It’s searchable.

              not very well, except you add a lot keywords to website title manually via bookmaeks

            • dylan604 1 hour ago
              Browser history is nothing but self incriminating evidence. Why would you keep it around?
              • fwip 7 minutes ago
                Sometimes you want to go to a website a second time.
                • dylan604 2 minutes ago
                  I do it all the time
          • girvo 3 hours ago
            I use tabs as ephemeral bookmarks, yeah

            Maybe there’s a better way

          • terribleperson 2 hours ago
            Bookmarks are so badly neglected tabs might be preferable. Firefox mobile doesn't even allow you to tag new bookmarks.
        • iugtmkbdfil834 3 hours ago
          Resource conservation ( memory ), attention conservation ( focus, change for additional distractions ) come to mind.
    • echelon 2 hours ago
      I'm working on tab garbage collection too!

      https://github.com/echelon/browser-focus

      I need to add screenshots.

      Basically puts an overlay on all timed out tabs, shows all timed out tabs so you can kill them all together, etc.

      I want a better algorithm / heuristic that can semantically track what I'm doing.

      I might eventually be brave enough to break out of tabs and let my windowing system handle everything.

    • cactusplant7374 1 hour ago
      It discourages and frustrates. So yes, it is useless in terms of modern browsing.
  • ramboldio 3 hours ago
    Related work: Trello allows 'aging' for tasks. One can set them to become more transparent over time or turn into stained 'pirate' paper.

    https://trello.com/power-ups/55a5d917446f517774210012

    • itomato 1 hour ago
      Cursed skeuomorphism
  • triclops200 4 hours ago
    "Originally, I was thinking about blocking users from closing their overgrown tabs until they slash all plants, but I thought it would be too annoying... " I would ask that you please add this as an option :), might actually use it for that feature alone because I do accidentally close old tabs by accident without noticing that was meaning to keep open.
  • alanning 2 hours ago
    Fun project, but I also really liked the way she came up with it:

    I was doing a little creative exercise the other day around the word "Overgrowth”…

    Is this a common thing in the creative space? Seems like a fun activity

  • ckx 4 hours ago
    This is so useless yet so cool!
    • SugarReflex 4 hours ago
      It doesn't do anything for shareholder value, but I love it.
    • jakzurr 3 hours ago
      It is absolutely! (But nobody better try putting this on my browser.)
  • profsummergig 2 hours ago
    Chrome's "tab group" feature is awesome and it ended my issue with unaddressed and open tabs. It even works on Chrome for Android mobile.
  • Dwedit 1 hour ago
    I just use a tab suspender, I prefer having RAM over having something cute.
  • b33l 4 hours ago
    I like to throw cress seeds into unattended keyboards
    • asphodele 3 hours ago
      Classic joke at university was to sprinkle cress seeds on the carpet of someone's room and water it with a fine mist from a plant sprayer. In the morning the inhabitant would wake up to a neat lawn that had appeared overnight by magic.
      • jakzurr 3 hours ago
        OK, now I'm having flashbacks of astronomy Macintosh lab, late at night, too much homework (early 90's).

        Fell asleep in front of keyboard, woke up to "Can of Worms" screensaver (never seen it before), had a heck of a start, wondering what the sound was, and what all those things were crawling all over the screen???

    • paid_dot_expert 4 hours ago
      Cress is a word I haven't heard in decades. Got to get some cress!
  • 5- 2 hours ago
    almost completely off-topic, but the demo video very heavy reminded me of http://www.traumagame.com/
  • jasonpeacock 2 hours ago
    People who keep tabs open too long are the same as those who store files in the system trash.

    At some point it’ll get flushed and you’ll only have yourself to blame…

    • zeroq 1 hour ago
      I'm one of those people.

      I have serious ADHD and I often dive a rabbit hole for an idea for side project. Or research. Or combination of both. Most of my side projects you could categorize as spikes. There's no serious intent on delivering something of value for the world, just going from A to B and learning a thing or two on the run.

      I'm like kerosene, I light up instantly, but the fire goes away very quickly. I can be researching a thing for 3 nights straight in my spare time to gather hooks and pieces of information... and then I get distracted and my focus goes somewhere else. And I'm left with 10 tabs that were suppose to kick start my idea.

      To my own surprise I tend to go back to these ideas, but sometimes it takes me months, and sometimes, I keep these tabs on one of my devices, opened for months at a time. Sometimes I scrape them, adding links with notes to Obsidian.

      Of course the amount of hoarded information vastly exceeds my throughput.

    • bertjk 1 hour ago
      And while initially you fear that you may have lost something valuable, you also immediately feel like a great burden has been lifted...
  • sublinear 3 hours ago
    > Just for fun, you can pick your weapon of choice between the rusty machete, the chainsaw and the flamethrower.
  • BLKNSLVR 3 hours ago
    Need more of this kind of fun!
  • johnea 4 hours ago
    I like it!

    I have a ton of these tabs. I don't consider them "neglected" though.

    Some things take years to come to fruition. You can't just go buy them at home despot.

    Maybe younger people don't yet have an appreciation for things that assume an air of legacy and heritage after many years of "just sitting there".

    When finally re-visited, they have a meaning that can only accumulate with the passage of significant time...

  • tamimio 4 hours ago
    These useless programs are like what you used to see back in win98 or winxp with dancing monkey or scoopydoo walking all over your desktop windows, which I think later turned to human dancers before being used to distribute all sort of viruses.
    • itomato 1 hour ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy

      "BonziBuddy was described as spyware[1] and adware,[2] and was discontinued in 2004 after Bonzi Software, Inc. faced lawsuits and fines regarding the software.[3]"

      It's just a matter of time before something like a "Zoltar screensaver for Basecamp" becomes an IP siphon.

    • makmanalp 3 hours ago
      sheep.exe was not useless, I loved it. you take that back.
  • bbor 2 hours ago
    Woah, my interests! Anyone have any tips or favorite projects to share from procedural vine/flora generation? It's a fascinating space, and this extension seems to do surprisingly convincing job of it
  • firstdib 2 hours ago
    [flagged]