I've though about this a lot and the big problems in the way of this are state and loading time. The state is a problem because keeping a tab open is the only way to preserve most of its state (scrolling, forms, etc.) and the loading time to cold-load a page makes bookmarks much less appealing for things that are related to what I'm currently doing. After those two issues are fixed, the rest is just UI.
I think Edge has some pretty neat UI for this kind of thing with whatever that button on the top left of the tab bar is called, but I haven't actually used it much since everything else about Edge is a hot mess.
If we could somehow dump the whole tab state to disk and restore it later, that would basically solve both of the above problems. But looking at the memory footprint of modern browsers, I doubt that's practical.
State is why we use tabs instead of history. A lot of this thread is about what to do with tabs once they are opened, not analyzing why they open the way they do.
Back is unreliable. The page might reload, dynamic pages like reddit will generate new results or reorder them. The safe thing to do is click all links in new tabs and then come back to the original link page. Right clicking the back and forth buttons hides a ton of relevant information thats not visible without a context menu, AND its broken into two context menus. I have to remember which button to right click.
Even on a google search, its easier to middle click all 10 results and then close 9 tabs once i dismiss them than it is to click back 10 times and try navigating between each step. And if i run into a site i like, now im in the sticky situation of wanting the current tab open, and the previous tab in history open. Which one do i want to inherit the navigation history? Thats part of the reason its easier to ignore history near completely (only using it for specific linear non branching navigation.) Its significantly less thinking, mouse movement, and task switching. Step 1 open all links, step 2 analyze links. Not a back and forth.
I open tabs to replace all history navigation. I keep tabs open as short term bookmarks until they can be closed or bookmarked.
I think Edge has some pretty neat UI for this kind of thing with whatever that button on the top left of the tab bar is called, but I haven't actually used it much since everything else about Edge is a hot mess.
If we could somehow dump the whole tab state to disk and restore it later, that would basically solve both of the above problems. But looking at the memory footprint of modern browsers, I doubt that's practical.