I would prefer a functionality like “The Great Suspender” for Chrome offers (at least as an additional option).
That way, tabs are still visible as tabs - but the content is replaced by a simple placeholder. The great suspender starts snoozing tabs after they have been open for a certain period of time. You simply restart them after clicking on the placeholder icon (if I recall that correctly you can click anywhere within the tab, but I might be mistaken).
Hey Wolfram, as far as i know, our platform team considering a feature that throttles processes running an background tabs progressively as they become unused. It sounds like this is more-or-less what you’re describing.
Depends on how they implement it. With the Chrome extension the tab is not reactivated by simply navigating to it. I must explicitly click onto it to reload the tab. So what exactly is “use”? Most likely they have to redraw the tab when I reenter it (unless they also show a placeholder). For most layouts this surely involves more resources then simply drawing a simple text in the center of the tab.
But if implemented - in contrast to just being considered to implement - it will be a great improvement over the current state.