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user-inactivated  ·  3904 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How do you save your favorite parts of the internet?

Actually, I do, quite often. What's great about it is that I'm not just saving the link, I'm saving the link's context. So I can see where the link came from a couple tabs above the tab I'm looking at. It brings me right back to the state of mind and what I was researching/looking for when I found the link. I can also look below that tab and see all the links that that link evolved into. It's much more handy and not-stupid than you might initially think. People think I'm crazy, but the system's proven its use to me again and again.

For instance, if I'm researching relational databases right now, I can type "relational databases" into my search box, and below the query, Firefox will show me a list of tabs I have open that contain the words "relational databases". It will give me an option to "switch tabs", and I can switch hundreds of tabs back to the link. Voila, I'm instantly at a tab which is surrounded by many other related tabs (and as I scroll up or down, slightly less related tabs, which again is useful for determining context).

Having a chronologically ordered list of 2600 links is so much better than having a categorically ordered list of 2600 links because of the context it gives me. I can still pattern-match for the words in the title of the URL if I need to find it too, so searching for a category technically works.

What's cool is that I sometimes have a tab open more than once, so I can potentially have more than one context for this one link, giving me more than one perspective on this one aspect of my research.