On that note, here's a bunch of other things I wish various software I use often would introduce
Summary:
1) Firefox - "Private Browsing Container Tab Type
2) Desktop Window Managers - Project-Based Application Window Grouping + Complete Window State Restoration on Restart
Firefox
Perhaps the single-biggest feature I'm missing from Firefox these days is really the ability to define multiple separate/concurrent "Private Browsing" type sessions, but to maybe have these persist across browser restarts / until the last tab in each of those sessions is closed.
Or maybe, this should be phrased as: "Make a 'Private Browsing' Container Tab type that resets when all tabs within that container-group are closed.
Use Cases:
1) The prime "totally-above-board" usecase is to manage logging into Office 365 accounts.
As anyone who has used one recently will know that most now have an aggressive ~8-12hr "auto signout" thing enabled that requires not only re-logging in, but also closing the relevant tabs and/or clearing relevant cookies (which are apparently set to only auto-delete on browser close, unless you manually go in and delete them)
2) Avoiding tracking to your "primary accounts" while still wanting to have a few "longer-form reads / watches" partially completed
3) Dealing with various paywalls - *ahem*
Desktop Window Managers
I've written about these many times before, but things I want here are "very simple" (maybe not technically, but that's beside the point):
1) Ability to group application *windows* by "projects", and have these *windows* sticky within a particular "project group", with ability to rearrange the order that these appear within the taskbar for that group
i.e. In my case, I almost always have the root folder, a text editor window (or 2-3 more) for that project, and a Git Gui-Client window open for each project I'm doing, along with maybe 2-3 reference docs windows (i.e. a mix of Web Browser windows + Word/PDF Docs + Notepads)
Many people would argue that "workspaces" do this, but sadly they do not do the second part below.
Seeing a recent discussion on those horrid old "MDI interfaces" the other day made me realise that fundamentally, the trend setting OS makers (i.e. "Microsoft" + "Apple") have *always* held a massive misconception about how people work + want to work. That is, they fundamentally expect that people only have *one* project going on at a time, and that therefore, all the windows open in a particular application are related to each other (i.e. "separate Word docs / spreadsheets", or "different Photoshop images for the same client")
2) Ability to mark certain windows and/or applications as "free floating" (i.e. not belonging to any specific workspace / project), but rather always being visible as a separate set from those ones.
I need this for the following specific use cases:
a) Keeping my various "comms" applications up (i.e. Email + Chat + , regardless of what project I'm working on / whichever workspace I'm on). The fact I can't do this is the main reason I don't use workspaces for switching between active projects (i.e. as I miss incoming stuff + get whiplash from notifications switching workspaces on me / remembering to navigate between them)
b) Having ready access to "screen recording / snapping" tools (i.e. for capturing screenshots + testing GIF's) without those windows being lost to "the last workspace that had them open" (i.e. resulting in unwanted workspace switches again)
3) Ability to *always* restore *ALL* of the open windows - correctly assigned to their appropriate workspaces, and in the manually-chosen / prescribed order)
THIS IS THE PRIMARY REASON I ABSOLUTELY **HATE** REBOOTING MY MACHINES CURRENTLY!!! (If I could, I would NEVER reboot. EVER. But forced auto-updates currently force my hand on this.)
As it stands, rebooting always means:
* 1) Manually restoring several dozen windows, across multiple workspaces
(NOTE: Windows is really flaky about this - some do, some don't, and other times none do. Linux just doesn't do it at all)
* 2) Getting these windows ordered correctly in the taskbar
(This is made more tricky if you cannot easily reorder taskbar items, and must do it based on window / application opening order)
* 3) "Restoring State" in each window:
i) Logging In (i.e. a *REAL* pain if any of these requires a 2FA / IPA login, and the OTP codes only update once a minute, with password typos triggering another 1 minute wait)
ii) Navigating To Relevant Files / Directories again
iii) Hotloading the Commands For Each Terminal (i.e. so the uparrow + enter dance will work as usual under "steady state" conditions)
Result: Any time a reboot happens, I expect 10-15 minutes of downtime restoring my environment. That's on top of the 10-15 minutes it takes for updates to apply (on a good day when it doesn't trash your machine)
So yeah... if we could actually get perfect state restoration working, I wouldn't care so much about preventing reboots.
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