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Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs

258 points • by speckx • last Thursday at 3:52 PM • 85 comments • view on HN

Comments

drfloyd51 • yesterday at 10:06 PM

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.

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jdprgm • today at 4:25 AM

I don't think any browsers are really designed for the range of how many tabs people keep open.

I also wonder what the distribution does really look like. Just on my primary profile here I felt like I was making progress trying to get it to under 2000 tabs recently.

It feels like a hopeless battle though. Across multiple machines and browsers and browser profiles i'd reckon i'm stuck at like 12,000 open tabs.

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ramboldio • yesterday at 11:07 PM

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

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triclops200 • yesterday at 10:06 PM

"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 • yesterday at 11:44 PM

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

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ccozan • today at 7:52 AM

Can I have the same for my chatGPT chats?

profsummergig • yesterday at 11:54 PM

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.

20after4 • today at 6:24 AM

You could combine this with tab unloading to save resources once a tab has gotten completely overgrown.

newscracker • today at 4:02 AM

This is so cool! I wish for this to be available on Firefox, where I usually have multiple windows with each window having several tabs. The repository doesn’t make it clear if this works on non-Chrome/ium browsers.

Barbing • today at 3:24 AM

Related:

  Zero regrets: Firefox power user kept 7,500 tabs open for two years
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41156568
ckx • yesterday at 9:58 PM

This is so useless yet so cool!

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b33l • yesterday at 10:12 PM

I like to throw cress seeds into unattended keyboards

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patatino • today at 6:05 AM

Who else starts with zero tabs every day?

Dwedit • today at 12:41 AM

I just use a tab suspender, I prefer having RAM over having something cute.

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BLKNSLVR • yesterday at 11:14 PM

Need more of this kind of fun!

5- • yesterday at 11:30 PM

almost completely off-topic, but the demo video very heavy reminded me of http://www.traumagame.com/

sublinear • yesterday at 10:24 PM

> Just for fun, you can pick your weapon of choice between the rusty machete, the chainsaw and the flamethrower.

tamimio • yesterday at 10:10 PM

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.

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bbor • today at 12:00 AM

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

johnea • yesterday at 10:19 PM

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...

firstdib • yesterday at 11:57 PM

[flagged]

jasonpeacock • today at 12:16 AM

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…

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