Systems, Shortcuts, and The Motivation For Building a Chrome Extension

Developing a system and extension to manage tabs in chrome

Overview

• Motivation
• Pieces of the puzzle
  • A System
  • A Runner
  • Shortcuts
• The Result

Motivation

Tab management throughout a given day is a struggle. I have tabs that I always need open and refrence or work in often. Then there’s links i click on or a variety of rabbit-holes i go down when trying to solve a problem. Before I know it, I can’t see any of the titles.

Further, one of the goals I have is to do as much as possible using the keyboard and as little as possible with a mouse. If I can build reliable systes around keyboard shortcuts then I’ll be able to navigate around my computer alot easier.

The pieces of the puzzle

A system

Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to copy and paste it from another place. In my case, I have the same issues with tab management in code editors as I do with browser tabs, and have had to develop a system to manage it.

The resulting system goes as follows:

• Pin and organize tabs you need
• Don’t pin too many tabs
• At a context switch close all unpinned tabs

A Runner

A more recent development in software has been the concept of a command pallete or runner. Essentially it’s a search box where every possible command in the current context is searchable and can be executed. Things like the macOS spotlight, Alfred but they’ve started to show up as an expected feature in software.

• Vscode has cmd + shift + p
• Intellij products have cmd + shift + a
• Figma has “quick actions” with cmd + /
• Google Sheets and other Google Office products have “search the menus” with option + /
• Office products have a “Tell me” button that can be opened with alt + Q

The premise of all of these is a convenient way to search a command instead of browsing for it in a given menu. So why haven’t browsers caught on? Thankfully for my use case they have an extension framework taht can be used.

Existing functionality

• cmd + shift + a - search open tabs and re-open recelty closed tabs
• cmd + w - close current tab (system wide)
• cmd + t - open new tab
• cmd + l - highlight and select text in address bar
• cmd + shift + } - make tab one to the left active
• cmd + shift + { - make tab one to the right active
• cmd + shift + c - open devtools and select element on the page
• cmd + option + j - open devtools and show console
• cmd + 1 - select first tab
• cmd + 2 - selected second tab
• cmd + (3..9) select tabs 3-9
• cmd + 0 - select last tab
• cmd + , - open preferences / settings (system wide)

Functionality to build

The missing pieces to realise the system above in the browser include

• Command search functionality
• Pinning/unpinning
• Moving a tab left or right, start or end
• Closing all unpinned tabs
• Closing all tabs
• Mapping shortcuts to the most important pieces

The result

A chrome extension called Operator extension

Once installed, open the command pallete using cntrl + space. Search for a command and hit enter to execute a command.

By default four shortcuts are assigned.

• ctrl + space to show the command runner
• cmd + shift + x to pin/unpin the current tab
• ctrl + shift + ← to move currrent tab left
• ctrl + shift + → to move currrent tab right

The way this allows me to easily use my tab management system is.

1. I pin any tabs I know I need to keep open or are central to my work cmd + shift + x
2. I organize pinned tabs using ctrl + shift + left & right arrows
3. At a context switch I open to search for a command ctrl + space
4. Search for close all and it will auto-complete to close all unpinned tabs and hit enter

At this point, Try for yourself and if you have any feedback, open an issue on github.

Stay tuned to learn how it’s built.