Gardener;102128 said:
I feel like I'm missing something. Why not use bookmarks?
For what purpose? That is, what problem do you think using bookmarks would solve?
I don't use bookmarks. What I do is open lots of tabs. When I want to go to another page, I look at one or two tabs, decide whether I want to overwrite them, and if so then use them again (leaving the previous page possibly accessible via the "back" button). Otherwise, I open a new tab. When I log off (e.g. at the end of the day) I close the browser, closing all the tabs. If I want to remember a url for a longer period of time I store it elsewhere, not in bookmarks.
I used bookmarks many years ago, but pretty much quit after browsers changed (so bookmarks didn't work the way I was used to) and all my bookmarks got lost (or transformed into just a list of urls, no longer bookmarks) at least once when switching to a different computer or browser or something.
Oh, OK, I do use homepage bookmarks -- the kind where you have a few icons of commonly-used pages always visible. Very convenient. I just don't bother using the kind of bookmark I usually think of as bookmarks. I also have my own homepage with a lot of convenient links, more permanent than a browser-specific list of bookmarks.
The purposes of the way I do it are: (1) If I want to keep a url for later reference another day, I do so, and (2) If I was using a url a very short time ago, I can (usually) very easily find it again in a tab.
For example, I may click on one of my homepage bookmarks, then half a minute later want to refer to the same page again and not want to even go to the trouble of finding the homepage bookmark again -- I just go back to the same tab!
It's like having a number of sheets of paper spread out on my desk. You could ask "why don't you use folders?" -- that would cover up the pages. I want them more easily accessible.
That's just how I do it, and the reasons. At another time I might be doing it some other way. There are other reasons. I'm not claiming my way is the best way or anything. It could be related to the way I use web pages, i.e. how often I want to look again at a page I was just looking at.
There's a more general principle at work here: for some things, the point in time at which I stop needing the thing available is a time when I'm not thinking about the thing. I rarely delete computer files, for example. Instead I put them into a directory where they'll be automatically deleted a few days later. That's because I'm much more likely to think of a use for something soon after I've been thinking about it, and actively deleting it would involve thinking about it. Browser tabs are similar.
