It's just someone creating a pull request to the dmca repository with the pull request containing the entirety of the youtube-dl repository (and its history). It's mostly a joke
You don’t need electron app. Chrome has built in support for creating apps from webpages. Tools->more tools->create shortcut and it will save the shortcut into your apps folder.
I like the Gmail keybindings. Only scrolling the message by lines is not available. (Scrolling the message by page is available.) Somehow, I like to scroll by lines...
I was following along until the electron part. Why spin up a whole new browser instance instead of, say tearing off a tab for mail from your existing browser?
I've had the exact same experience you described. Realizing i3 is the way to go and apps shouldn't manage tabs themselves - trying to stop Firefox / Chrome from doing so - realizing it's not simple and the no tabs extension is problematic. Trying qutebrowser and giving up because it's limited.
I've settled on NoTabs Firefox with a userChrome.css that hides the tab bar until Firefox someday supports native no tabs.