busy* short-term storage of information (me)
* keep tabs that they know they'll never get around to reading
* a sort of external memory bank (me)
* a manifestation of everything that's on my mind right now. Or the things that should be on my mind right now...
* feeling flustered by having so many tabs open — a situation called "tab overload" — * feeling ashamed that they appeared disorganized by having so many tabs up at once
Also, they sometimes crash a browser or a computer. This is annoying, but some people find the value of the tabs exceeds their risk.
The issue is not tabs as a tool. The issue is whether or not you are able to examine that tool and find a way to use it that works for you -- or determine it is more trouble than it's worth and avoid it.
I use my tab bar like a bookshelf. The left side has my static tabs: things I access frequently, like my blog and the Time-and-Date page. The right side has my active tabs: things that change rapidly as I look up a topic, close it, and look up something else. In the middle is, yes, a bunch of cruft that I mean to work with or visit occasionally, but don't have a better way of storing where I'll remember it. This method works excellently for me, and I am greatly aggravated if the browser crashes in a way that erases that stack of tabs. So I have a backup list of the URLs. That way a crash loses only a small subset of the tabs. I use the tab bar all day long, every day; it's one of the most-used computer features for me. That doesn't mean it is good for everyone. It means I know how my brain works and how to use tools accordingly, provided those tools are potentially of use to me in some way.
One suggested improvement is a way to sort tabs into groups and subgroups. Well, I'm already doing that on a lateral spectrum. A different interface for such sorting might make that easier, or harder.
