web-browsers on S Anand

How to Organize Browser Workspaces with LLMs and Data

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 04:44:36 +0000

Here’s an example of how I am using LLMs to solve a day-to-day workflow problem.

Every day, I interact with a barrage of websites: emails, news, social media, and work tools across multiple devices. Microsoft Edge’s workspaces syncs groups of websites across devices. I’ve never tried it, started today, and wondered: how should I organize my workspaces?

Rather than think (thinking is outdated), I used LLMs.

Extract Browsing History

Edge stores website history in a SQLite database. But the file is locked by the browser by default. So I spent a fair bit of time figure out how to read it despite it being unlocked. Here are some options:

datasette .config/microsoft-edge/Default/History --nolock
sqlite3 'file:.config/microsoft-edge/Default/History?mode=ro&nolock=1' 'SELECT url FROM urls' > urls.txt

(DuckDB cannot read locked SQLite files - else I’d use that.)

Then comes extracting the hostnames from the URLs. I used llm cmd to ask Gemini 2.5 Pro:

llm cmd 'Extract just the hostnames from urls.txt which has a list of URLs, one per line. Only pick the https:// URLs. Save into hostnames.txt'

I expanded the response awk -F/ '/^https:\/\//{print $3}' urls.txt into:

awk -F/ '/^https:\/\//{print $3}' urls.txt | sort | uniq -c | sort -k 1n > hostnames.txt

That gave me ~1,400 hostnames.

Cluster with LLMs

I passed these to O1 Pro and Gemini 2.5 Pro:

Here are the sites I visit, with rough frequency. On Microsoft Edge, I can create workspaces. Based on this browsing behavior, what kinds of workspaces might I create? Give me multiple options.

Both gave a similar set of strategies, which I’ve implemented as:

Main: email, calendar, tasks, etc.
Work: work related sites (drive, expenses, HR platform, etc.)
Chill: YouTube, Minesweeper, Netflix, etc.
Read: blogs, articles, stuff I need to catch-up on
Code: GitHub, StackOverflow, CodePen, etc.
Chores: government services, shopping, etc.
AI: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc.

I was surprised how similar a strategy both models converted to. Either these models really think alike, or my browsing pattern is a fairly common one. (My guess is the latter.)

Write with LLMs

After setting up my groups, I needed to write this post. Instead of slow typing, I stepped out and talked with ChatGPT. (Talking to a machine in the office felt strange, so I changed my space.) I explained my whole process, and in about eight minutes, the first draft was done. Normally, writing takes much longer, but the voice chat made it quick and smooth.

The editing after that was manual and took 20 minutes.

Things I learnt

Simple Patterns: My browsing history shows clear patterns. AI helped me find groups I couldn’t see before
Small Fixes - Big Wins: A small challenge (opening a locked file) taught me a bunch of new useful stuff
Voice Made It Easy: Talking with ChatGPT made writing fast and easy. It shows that speaking to a machine can save time

Google Chrome screenshots

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:00:00 +0000

I went to the Google Chrome site.

Clicking on the “Accept and Install” button…

… automatically launched the downloader in Firefox…

… and (after a fairly short while) started installing the application directly. This may be the most painless install I’ve done in a while.

I clicked on “Customise the settings”

This is what it looks like.

And that’s it! It installs, and launches in just a few seconds. First impressions: the startup and rendering are really fast.

The address bar doubles up as a search bar. Very sensible.

Several nice features: incognito mode, application shortcuts, and developer tools.

The Javascript console has Javascript autocompletion! Watch out, Firebug.

The “Use DNS pre-fetching” looks interesting. My browsing certainly seems faster. Might be faster than Opera, even.

The “Show suggestions for navigation errors” feature.

There’s a task manager…

… that shows how much memory each site uses.

But not all is good. This jQuery animation on my site leaves trails behind.

And the text box resizing is good, but feels a bit… wrong, somehow.

Plus: I can re-import history, bookmarks, etc. from Firefox at any point, so I don’t have to worry about using this as a secondary browser.

Update (8am UK, 3rd Sep): Chrome.exe isn’t installed in your “Program Files” folder. It’s in your “Documents and Settings” folder, under “Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application”. (That’s on Windows XP. Not sure about Vista.)

There’s a Themes folder, so I imagine more themes should be on their way.

There doesn’t seem to be an about:config option. But there are a whole lot of others:

about:cache
about:dns
about:histograms
about:memory
about:plugins
about:stats
about:version
about:crash
about:internets
about:network
about:blank
about:shorthang
about:hang
about:objects

I’m not entirely sure if the last two work. Based on comments at John Resig’s blog. Go through the code to see if you can find more.

Comments

Sumit Dhar 11 Sep 2008 1:47 am: Have found an interesting use for “Incognito” mode. Both my wife and I use the same laptop to access Gmail. Not wanting to use a second browser, invariably one has to logout to allow the other to access mail.

With Chrome’s Incognito mode, it uses a different directory to store the cookies. This allows two or more people to login to their Gmail accounts in different tabs.

Cheers,
D.
S Anand 12 Sep 2008 1:19 am: But do sessions persist? I thought that once you switch to incognito mode, your cookies would no longer be sent to the server, and that you would need to at least log in. So while one person can stay logged in, the other would still need to log in. Is that right?

AllPeers

Wed, 04 Jan 2006 12:00:00 +0000

I’m awaiting AllPeers. It’s a Firefox bittorrent extension that makes it easy to share files among peers.

Opera 7 beta

Thu, 14 Nov 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Opera 7 Beta is out. It sports a new look, which one tires of quite soon. But it’s as fast as ever, and has better standards compliance. via Anand

Mozilla 1.2 beta

Sun, 20 Oct 2002 12:00:00 +0000

I downloaded Mozilla 1.2 beta. It loads fast. It runs fast. It hasn’t crashed. It’s tab feature is great. It’s Type Ahead Find feature is fabulous. It’s add-ons are great. I think I’m going to switch browsers again! (My only crib, though, is that I can’t customize keyboard shortcuts. Or I don’t know how yet.)

Netscape 7.01

Thu, 23 May 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Netscape 7.01 is out. Preview release, mind. No, I haven’t tested it yet. Awaiting reviews. (24 May: No reason to switch)

Move away from IE

Tue, 12 Mar 2002 12:00:00 +0000

AOL, and hence its 30 million subscribers, could move away from IE towards Mozilla. That’s big.

Opera 6 Beta

Tue, 13 Nov 2001 12:00:00 +0000

Opera 6 Beta is out.

IE6 preview

Sat, 07 Jul 2001 12:00:00 +0000

The public preview of IE 6 is out. The revolutionary feature is smart tags. I think the image toolbar is a pretty neat idea too.

Internet Explorer 6 preview

Sun, 01 Apr 2001 12:00:00 +0000

The preview release of Internet Explorer 6 is out.

Internet Explorer 6 sneak preview

Sat, 03 Feb 2001 12:00:00 +0000

A sneak preview of MS IE6. What is worrying is that Microsoft may not release IE6 as a standalone application. They’re planning to bundle it with their next OS: Whister.

Internet TV

Mon, 29 Jan 2001 12:00:00 +0000

zeroTV: good TV-like entertainment for free. World Bank’s B-SPAN has World Bank seminars online. Yeah, the computer is becoming the TV.