Welcome to ThumbStrips
May 14th, 2008 – by jmandell
browse others share yours
Download count: 40,932 Last: 7-24-2008 at 10:54am
What is it?
A Firefox extension that creates a filmstrip of thumbnails – – ThumbStrip, get it? – – so you can see your history, and stop guessing at page names in the history sidebar. You can even share your ThumbStrips!
How do I install it?
It installs like any other Firefox extension – – you just need to accept the EULA first. (If you aren’t familiar with Firefox extensions, just click the link, then click “install now” when it appears. Installations take a few seconds, then restart Firefox to get going.)
How do I start using it?
The ThumbStrips icon will automagically appear in your toolbar. Click it to view your ThumbStrip, right-click to start and stop recording.
How do I get rid of it?
It uninstalls just like other extensions. Go to Tool > Add-ons, select ThumbStrips, and then click Uninstall. Restarting Firefox then removes it.
How do I get help for it?
Just comment here on the blog OR
Check out the topics that other users are talking about on Get Satisfaction
System Requirements
Firefox 2.0 or later, PC or Mac
Note: We moved previous comments over to their own page when we moved ThumbStrips here, to its own blog.
tagged: rough cut
Chloe | March 13th, 2008 at 3:13 am
Gees how very right you are, I am sick of blibbing ang blobing, and the only good snapshot I ve taken lately is of my dog, but yes very nice peace of worl, tip my hat to the team,
Why carnt we make this page interesting??
Reece | March 13th, 2008 at 3:15 am
Yeh we can put in all the right feed back and make it our own chatline. Works for me.
Aaron | March 18th, 2008 at 11:13 am
This looks cool. Will there be a Firefox 3 version?
Jonathan
| March 20th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Aaron, there will be a FF 3 version. We are testing it now and its looking good!
Chloe, thanks for the comment and I’d love to hear any suggestions you might have on how we can make this page interesting. We have upgraded our wordpress version so changing this page in the future will be very easy.
Coolie, I had to remove your comment since it’s just not cool to pick on people and I won’t edit people’s comments out of principle. So, feel free to repost.
Linda Magana | March 22nd, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I have tried 3 times to install “Thumbnails” on my Firefox 3 Beta 4. It downloads, starts installing and then I get a message that it will not install as the creator does not have secure updates. I don’t understand. Help, please.
Thanks.
Jonathan
| March 24th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Hi Linda,
The version that is compatible with FF3 is still in Beta. If you are interested in testing it out just ping back.
zaha | March 24th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
great plugin, is there a shortcut key to toggle on and off thumbnail view. Im all about keyboard shortcuts. Thanks!
Reed | March 25th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
I really like Thumbstrips. One annoying feature. I am trying to go back and print a bunch of pages a pulled up a few minutes ago. After I view a page from 10 minutes ago, Thumbstrips automatically takes me to the end of my thumbstrips because that is now the most recent time I have viewed it. I lose my spot in thumbstrips and have to go find where I was. Can be very confusing when all my pages look alike. I changed the setting to show me “every visit”, but Thumbstrips still insists on jumping me to the end of the list after viewing a page that was further back in my history. Is there a setting I can adjust to fix this?
Jason | March 30th, 2008 at 1:51 am
I think you should make it like a visual history. So you can go back maybe a couple of days and see your thumbstrip. Don’t have it delete as soon as you close your browser.
Jonathan
| April 1st, 2008 at 12:59 am
zaha - for a keyboard short cut you can use either F2 or CTRL-SHIFT-F (COMMAND-SHIFT-F on a Mac).
Reed - I have had the same problem and for now i just turn recording off when I am going over a thumbstrip to rearrange, save, or share. We will think about other ways we could do this.
Jason - thanks for the suggestion. We have been thinking about possible ways to to build a history that you could store, so stay tuned.
rabies | April 4th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
its very good and useful but my only gripe is it takes up too much of the screen, could the thumbnails be made smaller?
Jonathan
| April 4th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
thanks rabies - you can adjust the height to the strip by dragging the separator bar higher or lower.
Paulo | April 8th, 2008 at 5:54 am
Is the beta version (that works with FF3 Beta) available for use?
Rufus King | April 10th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Huge memory hog. I have one Firefox window with two tabs running, with this Thumbstrip” running…. says Firefox using 356MB!! Make it easier to delete cells, by one click, put a close “X” box in each cell. Put option - how much memory to consume in saving cells. Option slider - how long to save cells: 1 minute to unlimited.
stoplookandlearn | April 23rd, 2008 at 8:22 am
this is a great feature if you don’t already have it download it now!! and it doesn’t even slow firefox
ml3456 | April 29th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
I like, but even with the window dragged as low as it can go, still takes too much much of my screen. maybe the control section can go on the side or the whole strip on the side, but the icons still must be smaller. Maybe put the website name as a bubble that comes up if the icon is over it,
Jonathan
| May 2nd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Paulo - the FF3 ready version is in final testing mode - YAY! - and should be out next week.
Rufus - Im sorry its taking up so much memory. We addressed several memory issues in our 1.5 release. I would suggest trying to go to configure -> options-> and change “how often snapshots are taken” to “less frequently” and see if that helps.
ml3456 - thanks for the suggestions. We optimized ThumbStrips for a 1024×768 resolution and higher, are you at a setting lower than that>
Chad | May 5th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Please email me a link for the FF3 version. Thanks.
I’m using FF3 Beta 5 now.
Jeff | May 8th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Please create a shortcut/hot key to open and close the panel. Thanks and keep up the great work. ‘Jeff
Derek | May 9th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Hell, I was just wondering if I could get a link to the beta for FF3. My browsing experience feels a little empty without it.
Thanks
swilliamson
| May 9th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Jeff - Good news, you can already do that with ThumbStrips. Just press F2 to open/close the ThumbStrips viewer.
Derek - Can you wait a couple more days? We’re planning on releasing an updated version of ThumbStrips that works on FF3. We’re doing our final testing as we speak.
macuache | May 22nd, 2008 at 9:12 am
Its great but where does it stores all logs. Is it slow down the work of FF and will I have Gbs of logs if I always put recording ?
There are no clear information about that. and people don’t ask about it. This is not normal. This situation should be clearified.
Christopher Petersen | May 24th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
I LOVE THUMBSTRIPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SINCE THE MIND THINKS IN PICTURES, IT MAKES LIFE SO MUCH EASIER!!!!!!!!1
REMEMBER, A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS!!!
Chris | May 28th, 2008 at 12:20 am
I wouldn’t mind the ability to change the colors and fonts used by the thumbstip interface, but otherwise, well done. I’ll be a happy user of this extension!
macuache | June 6th, 2008 at 7:31 am
Good idea but not good implementation.
After 30-40 minutes my FF is becoming dramatically slow if I keep it on. Especially it is vivid when you browse YouTube.
As I’ve asked before: “Is it slow down the work of FF and will I have Gbs of logs if I always put recording ?”
I will answer on that by myself.
Yes. It does slow you work
Yes. It stores a lot in you memory.
macuache | June 6th, 2008 at 7:32 am
jmandell,
For God’s sake. How can we contact you directly. Is there any chance for people to communicate with you ?
Jonathan
| June 6th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Hello All - sorry it has been a while, usually we try to get in touch each week. We are actually working on a better way to implement customer service here:
http://getsatisfaction.com/thumbstrips/products/thumbstrips_thumbstrips
We will be putting up FAQs and this will allow us to consolidate the questions, bugs, and suggestions in one place.
Jonathan
| June 6th, 2008 at 9:02 am
macuache - we have worked hard to improve the performance of ThumbStrips, but depending on your specific computer setup it can slow down the performance. Some suggestions I have are:
1. Check out Firefox3 if you haven’t yet. They have made some major improvements in there latest version on memory management.
2. Go to Configure -> Options -> More -> and change how often snapshots are taken to “less frequently”
As for the storage of the data: check out this post http://intuitlabs.com/thumbstrips/2008/05/oh-where-oh-where-has-my-thumbstrip-gone/ which lists all location of the the ThumbStrip directory for different operating systems.
Again, I am sorry for the delay in getting back to you.
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