Browser Workflow: Another Approach to Web Apps (Premium)

I’ve spent the past several months forcing myself to access my primary web apps differently than my normal approach of pinning them—whether they’re “real” PWAs or not—to the Windows taskbar and using them like native applications. In doing so, I’m opening up new browser options, since not all browsers support this usage.

As you may know, I kind of obsess over workflow. But my current experimentation—which, really, has just turned into the new normal for how I do things—probably dates back to my Living with Chromebook series from last Fall, when I expressed my frustration with certain norms from Windows that aren’t available in Chrome OS.

More recently, I’ve come to understand that we collectively need to stop using Chrome and use a more private browser that doesn’t exist solely to serve the needs of Google’s advertising business. Some Chromium-based browsers, like Brave and the new Edge, satisfy this need nicely because both aggressively take on trackers (especially Brave) and remove Google dependencies while retaining the same level of website compatibility provided by Chrome.

And then there’s poor Firefox, which is ceding ground monthly in the usage share wars against its Chromium-based competitors. I feel bad about Firefox: It’s a fine browser with excellent, innovative built-in privacy and security protections, and it’s created using uniquely moral guidelines that should be an inspiration for the rest of the market. But as I predicted, its decision to stick with its own rendering engines appears to be dooming this browser to irrelevance.

I hope that doesn’t happen. But its lack of support for pinning web pages and web apps to the Windows taskbar is one of the other reasons I no longer use Firefox. Chrome does this. So does Brave. And the new Edge. And other browsers too. But not Firefox.

That said, most users probably don’t even know that you can pin web pages and web apps to the taskbar, even with those browsers that do support it. And there’s a good debate to be had around whether browser-based app/site navigation, as we see in browsers and in Chrome OS, or native application navigation is the better approach. Or, as I’ve been testing, whether they can coexist.

There are all kinds of ways in which one might access their most-used websites and web apps. You could simply manually type in the URL in a browser, hope that autocomplete figures it out early, and rely on a browser’s ability to reopen your previous set of tabs. You could use a home page of some kind of that links to them. If you’re a power user, you could pin them to the taskbar as I’d been doing.

Or. You could pin tabs within your browser. This is a capability that has existed for many years and is available on most if not all mainstream browsers. But it’s not something I ever seriously considered using myself, until fairly recently.

There are advantages to this approach.

Pinned tabs appear as mini tabs on the leftmost part of the row of tabs in the first browser window you open. So they’re always available, and when you first launch the browser after rebooting, they will load and be accessible. When you open secondary browser windows, those pinned tabs do not appear.

Because they appear within the browser window, pinned tabs do not require their own taskbar buttons. This saves space, which I’ve found to be especially useful on laptops and their lower-resolution and smaller displays. (And, on that note, this method could be particularly useful in this Coronavirus-inspired work from home time.)

And as noted, pinned tabs provide a unique way to access websites and apps on those browsers, like Firefox, that do not support taskbar pinning. If you can work this way, you have a broader range of browser choices. And I cannot stress this enough: Firefox deserves your attention.

Are there disadvantages? Of course.

If you’re used to the ALT + TAB method of switching between applications, including pinned websites and apps, then using pinned tabs will require you to learn to use CTRL + TAB within the browser to switch between tabs, including those pinned tabs. You may already know to do that, but the pinned tabs exist outside of the main OS multitasking shortcuts.

You probably shouldn’t load up the browser with too many pinned tabs, either. I’m using three, which map to the three web apps I’d previously pinned—Gmail, Google Calendar, and Twitter—and each takes up RAM and other resources every time you load that first browser window. Of course, the pinned versions do too. But I wouldn’t recommend loading down that one browser window with too much extraneous stuff: I limit mine to a handful on purpose.

As to whether it’s better or not, I’d say it is: While setting up taskbar pins is a one-time activity, there is a bit of configuration involved. And for someone like me who routinely moves from PC to PC, in part because I review them, using pinned tabs inside the browser is more efficient.

But what I appreciate most about this experiment is that I was even able to do it successfully. We all get stuck in our own ruts when it comes to getting things done, and changing our workflow like this can be difficult, as I’ve often experienced. This cuts to the heart of how I work every single day, so it’s kind of a big deal, even though I know some will be wondering why I even bothered. I need things to work just so I can work. And this works.

Anyway, it’s something to think about. And maybe try yourself. As for me, I’m sticking with it.