SB slowness, jq queries, and export options with nesting

[Gregor Menasian]

Greetings all,

I have solved a number of issues with the new SB from this group after the upgrade (many thanks for the active discussion contributors!).  I do have some remaining issues;

Context:

I have been using the old session buddy for years, and developed some scripted workflows for documentation and research consolidation based on the old markdown export feature with nested tabs in windows in sessions.

I also tend to run chrome, brave, and other chromium based browsers (as well as firefox based browsers) with 1k-4k tabs in 20-200 windows. This is because I frequently research several topics at once, and also have to run lots of dashboards and SaaS apps, etc.

1 - Slowness - The old version of session buddy handled my usage smoothly and quickly as long as I had enough RAM installed.  In contrast, as soon as the new version was installed, it started taking me 5-10 seconds to switch windows or tabs, even un a browser with only 1k tabs on a 64GB laptop which used to handle 4k smoothly, and would only start slowing down at 4.5K tabs.  Export/backup seems to save your entire history now, and takes a minute or more, whereas before a full SB backup only took about 10 seconds.

I think an option like before to only save the last N auto snapshots plus named sessions in a backup would help a lot.

2 - jq queries - Has anyone developed any jq queries to do anything with the new json backups?  Ideally I want to convert them to markdown like the old exported markdown - bulleted lists in window sections (and now with tab groups as another container inside windows) but any queries for listing and selecting sessions with the nested elements would be great, since I haven't had time to play with it much at all.  I will share any such queries I develop, but it may take me a while 

3 - Old export options - as at least a couple if others have mentioned, an export dialogue like the old one would be great - choose the format in a tab, and choose nesting elements to include with checkboxes (sessions, windows, tab groups, titles, URLs)

Thanks for all of the fixes, improvements and reaponse to feedback so far!

-Gregor

On Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 10:26 AM <sessionbud...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

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• Alert Session Buddy requires a newer browser version - 2 Updates
• Did session buddy auto-update on older Windows 7 and Chrome or Virus? - 2 Updates
• All My Save Data Gone - 2 Updates

Alert Session Buddy requires a newer browser version

Genius Troll <magakav...@gmail.com>: Apr 20 07:58PM -0700 Hi, so extension works smoothly on old version of chrome 109 . The only thing that is not working is tab count, otherwise its fully ok. Then why you made "alert" with urgently update on newest ...more

Session Buddy Support <sup...@sessionbuddy.com>: Apr 21 12:12PM -0600 > Then why you made "alert" with urgently update on newest version?   Because of the Chrome deprecations mentioned earlier.   Hans   On Sun, Apr 21, 2024 at 11:52 AM Genius Troll ...more

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Did session buddy auto-update on older Windows 7 and Chrome or Virus?

Genius Troll <magakav...@gmail.com>: Apr 20 08:03PM -0700 on my 109 version its not showing at all, but overall seems to be works fine. The annoying that is missing source link(when using CTRL+F), you need to navigate your mouse to be able check for ...more

Session Buddy Support <sup...@sessionbuddy.com>: Apr 21 12:07PM -0600 You can enable the counts badge in settings.   2-line tab display will be re-added soon.   Hans   On Sun, Apr 21, 2024 at 11:53 AM Genius Troll <magakav...@gmail.com> wrote:   ...more

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All My Save Data Gone

Manic_Misfit <timh...@gmail.com>: Apr 21 09:40AM -0700 Went to click on "what's new button" and when I attempted to click back on my content everything was just....gone. Collections....History....gone. WTF? Super annoying. ...more

Session Buddy Support <sup...@sessionbuddy.com>: Apr 21 12:00PM -0600 This could be related to available disk space, but we’ve also been getting a few reports of browsers randomly wiping extension data due to a bug in the IndexedDB implementation. Unfortunately, ...more

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[Session Buddy Support]

> as soon as the new version was installed, it started taking me 5-10 seconds to switch windows or tabs

Doubtful that SB is responsible for slowing down tab/window switching. The background process is extremely lightweight and not doing anything the old version didn't do. If anything, the background process is more efficient now with the new service worker model required for Manifest v3, which suspends the process when not in use.

You can try to prove this to yourself by disabling SB in extension settings when you notice the tab switching lag.

> export formats

You can copy collections or parts of collections to the clipboard in all the same formats that were supported in v3. See Settings > Other to enable the desired formats. For many use cases, this is arguably quicker than exporting to a file. Is there something specific to your workflow that makes copy/paste non-ideal?

An option to include groupings in copied content will be added soon.

Hans

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[Gregor Menasian]

Hello Hans,

I will try disabling session buddy and testing the slowness issue.  Session Buddy is the only extension I run in most of my browsers, so maybe the issue is with the latest Chromium changes, which introduced all of the changes which forced the re-architecting of SB for v4.

For the currently supported copy/paste formats, the previous interface was much more feature rich, faster, and easier to use (for my use cases).

From memory, this was the old interface flow:

... -> export -> export dialog box - elements:

- window with the export of the currently selection (current session selectable like any other session) in the currently selected format.  This was scrollable, and searchable with "find in page", and you could highlight, copy, and paste a subset of it quickly and easily if needed

- checkboxes for what hierarchical columns to include in the export - sessions, windows, titles, URLs (columns required for currently selected format were not de-selectable)

- tabs for each export format to switch between them

- action buttons

  - copy to clipboard

  - save to file - a file 

Markdown was bullet lists of properly titled URLs, in tab order in an H2 window block if windows were selected.

JSON had more data - I saved it several times, but used markdown much more often.

My workflow:

1 - Build up windows of tabs related by a theme such as a research topic, tool group, dashboard set, etc.

2a - export the current session as markdown with windows and nested tabs

2b - search the export dialog box for an interesting tab or window, and then directly highlight, copy, and paste that part of the session (usually a window or part of a window) somewhere I needed it

3 - run external scripts to do things like diff sessions, merge and dedupe sessions and/or windows they contain, create a merged superset of unique links for searching with another (grep based) utility

4 - rinse and repeat - I exported the current session at least 10 times a day

The new copy to clipboard for markdown is missing the window block headers and bullets for each link, and has a blank line between each link.

- This loses the window context which was previously preserved

- Now that the browsers natively support named tabsets as a nesting element under Windows, that context is also lost now

- the blank lines make it all less readable

- There is no quick save to timestamped file option, so I have to click a lot more times to copy, open a new file in an editor, paste, choose a file name, and save

- The export/backup option takes forever to save the full history snapshots and all saved sessions in a giant JSON file, but at least that should have most of the context I need

To use the JSON file, I will now need to use jq to select the correct values for the correct tags from the correct session, and reformat them as markdown to emulate the old export to markdown feature.

Has anyone else been doing anything remotely similar with the new JSON backups using jq or similar tools?

Thanks

Gregor

[Session Buddy Support]

To provide some context, the main motivation behind the changes to Import/Export was that it was trying to do too much, which meant that it wasn't doing a good job accommodating some of its use cases.

Most significantly, many users were experiencing browser lock-ups and crashes when performing imports/exports involving a lot of data (eg, all "Saved Sessions"). This required us to consider how best to spread use cases involving getting data in and out of Session Buddy across an appropriate set of features. What we landed on was:

Export/Import/Restore:

• intended for infrequent use cases involving large data sets, such as:
• backup/restore to facilitate re-installation or recovery
• manual transfer of collections from one instance of Session Buddy to another as a way of allowing collection sharing and synching until those features are natively supported within Session Buddy
• transferring Session Buddy data to another system/application
• uses a single universal format intended for software consumption
• uses the file system (important since this allows for streaming of arbitrarily large data sets, fixing the lock-up issue)

Copy/Paste:

• intended for frequent and quick use involving a focused scope of tabs or collections
• supports multiple formats intended for human or software consumption
• uses the clipboard

The workflow you outlined sounds to me like it's two different workflows:

1) curate the session for interesting windows/tabs to copy/paste (step 2b)
2) run scripts against session data (step 3)

Assuming we make the necessary markdown adjustments you recommend to include groupings, block headers, bullets, etc, it sounds like the first workflow is best served by SB's "Copy as Markdown".

Curation of what's copied can be aided by 1) the filtering that occurs when you type in the search box and 2) individual window/tab selection via checkbox or ctrl (or cmd) + click. Of course you can still further edit the copied content if desired within the paste target itself or in a text editor which arguably provides a better editing experience than a browser textbox.

As for the second workflow (script consumption), it sounds like this is best served by Export, which will predictably give you everything in a consistent format. It may also be worth asking what your external scripts are ultimately meant to achieve and whether some of them represent opportunities for new Session Buddy features that could more effectively serve their end goals.

> Now that the browsers natively support named tabsets as a nesting element under Windows, that context is also lost now

FWIW, SB v3 export output did not include tab groups. An option to "include groupings" in v4 would ultimately include them.

> There is no quick save to timestamped file option, so I have to click a lot more times to copy, open a new file in an editor, paste, choose a file name, and save

For your workflow that requires a file, use Export.

> The export option takes forever to save the full history snapshots and all saved sessions in a giant JSON file, but at least that should have most of the context I need

If you select a set of collections (via ctrl (or cmd) + click) before clicking Export, the Export dialog presents an option to export only those collections.

Hans

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[Gregor Menasian]

Hello,

My use case frequency is kind of the opposite of your stated intent - Here are my frequencies of each use case of the old Session Buddy:

1. 5-30 times per day: Export the current session only, with all container representations (previously windows, now it should also include tab groups within windows) as Markdown and JSON (I did lots of subsequent automated processing of the exported active session dumps with simple scripts and utilities)
2. 1-5 times per week: Export, but only search (find in page) the export text for a quick copy of a set of links to paste elsewhere, usually in Markdown
3. On browser version upgrades, or roughly once a month - Backup Session Buddy (all data) as JSON
4. On OS reinstall or changing active laptop - Restore all data from the latest JSON backup

To be clear, Here is my understanding of the mapping of older Session Buddy term - New SB term/behavior

• Backup - Export
• Save - Save (saving a session to the named saved sessions list)
• Auto-save last N sessions (default 5) - Snapshots hourly of history changes, but with no limit, or significant change detection to use as a count against the saved sessions limit
• Export Selected Session - save a session first, then select it, and then export only that session, but only in JSON now, and the active session cannot be exported without saving it first

Are these correct?

However other things go, please add the tab groups container information to the export/backup JSON, and ideally other formats as well.  It is a native browser feature, and would lose data on import if it were not included.

For the single session export option you mention currently being available, I usually have the current active browser session selected, but it seems to do a full backup of all data each time, maybe I'm not selecting it correctly.  I don't want to save within Session Buddy each time, and then export the named session, this would take even longer, and clutter up my Session Buddy session list with hundreds of sessions which were only saved to be able to be exported.

Thanks again!

[Session Buddy Support]

OK so the frequency of the use cases you’ve outlined actually match up nicely with the intended usage of copy paste and export features. 

For 1 and 2, use copy paste since it’s designed for quick and frequent use. For 3 and 4, use export.

For 1, the entire current session can be copied to the clipboard by clicking “Copy” in the overflow menu or hitting ctrl (or cmd) + c. If any windows or tabs are selected at the time, only those selections are copied. 

For 2, take advantage of SB’s search and individual link selection. 

Of course in order for copy paste to be useful for you we need to include the groupings, which we intend to do soon. 

Hans

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sessionbuddy-discuss/5e20a856-59fe-459b-87f5-90ce5c8a34cbn%40googlegroups.com.