ThumbStrips

We are working on the next release of TS, and have been scouring through your comments for ideas on what to fix, add, or change about TS. There are so many, but a couple big ones we’ve heard from a lot of folks (and will definitely be in this release):

• “Figure out a way for TS to use less of my CPU” / “it takes too long to save a TS”
• “Let me choose the sites I don’t want TS to record”

So here’s your chance, vote for the feature(s) you think should be in the next release - and tell us why:

• Annotation - write extra details about the pages in your TS
• Customized order - change the order of the pages, drag & drop maybe?
• Menu bar - reduce the size of the buttons on the menu bar
• Navigation - get rid of the arrow buttons, just use mouse or bottom bar to scroll
• Plug-ins - let me show my TS in different places… Facebook app, Blog This button, others?
• Website - make it easier to share my TS and check out what other people have posted
• Customized preferences - let me set how I want TS to start up and work
• Customized look - let me choose a different look & feel for my TS
• Docking toolbar - let me move the whole viewer
• History - tie TS to my history, and the history preferences
• Other - don’t see the one change you really want… what is it?

Vote for as many or as few options as you’d like. Comment here on this blog, or over in the forum post - and remember, the feature with the most votes will be included in the next version of ThumbStrips.

There have been some great suggestions, comments, and questions posted on the ThumbStrips page over the last few days. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to share your thoughts, and in the name of being fair, I thought I’d tackle the top-3 most recent questions here:

Why does the ThumbStrips viewer only show the first page thumbnail and nothing else for me?
Yeah, this little bugger’s a pain. We’re working with a couple TS users directly to try and better troubleshoot this problem (thanks comroe & rondine!), and in this instance it was that TS wasn’t playing nice with McAfee SiteAdvisor. The short-term solution to get TS working is to disable McAfee, but we know that’s not a great long-term solution, so we are still working on this. If you have any ideas, let us know.

Why do I get an alert when I close Firefox - is that ThumbStrips?
Yes, it’s ThumbStrips doing an auto-save of your last browser session, and it’s not quite done at the time you are closing Firefox. We’ve seen a few comments where folks are asking for an auto-save feature, so you can rest assured - it’s there. My question to you guys - have you gone back and opened up a previous TS session? What did you do with it - did you add on more thumbnails, did you go back to a specific page, something different? We think the auto-save is a useful feature, but I want to know what you guys think.

Why doesn’t ThumbStrips open automatically when I open Firefox?
Well, we figured you open Firefox with a specific task in mind - whether it’s checking the news, searching for something, etc - so we didn’t want to get in the way of that. TS is running in the background when you open your browser, so you aren’t losing any of your browsing session - but we aren’t taking up your web “real estate” with the viewer all the time. That was just our thought - but I’m curious, if more people are browsing with the viewer open all the time, are you using it to jump between pages instead of the back / forward buttons?

That’s it for now, but keep that feedback coming in!

I’ve started thinking about what future versions of ThumbStrips will be, and it’s always fun to brainstorm about the possibilities with the iLab team. But a big impact on our thinking is actually coming from your posted feedback. There have been so many different ideas rolling in from all over the globe (woo hoo!), some things we guessed might happen, as well as some great ah-ha’s we hadn’t thought about before. And, although nothing is set in stone, I wanted to give you a little peek into what we are thinking / talking about right now:

>> Building a website. What if there were a place for people to save and find their ThumbStrips, or look through other people’s? Could people view a ThumbStrip without actually having the add-on installed? What else would people want to do here?

>> “Do-Not-Record” list. There are certain sites when I’m online that I will never share or need to go back to in my history. Based on the feedback, many of you guys feel the same way. Giving people a way to set that list themselves would add a level of privacy and customization.

>> Reducing CPU usage. There is a lot of information packed into a ThumbStrip - graphics, content, timing - and while we have taken measures to minimize the impact to memory / CPU, there are some times where it spikes. I know that Scott is always looking for ways to improve this piece, and it’s just a matter of time before he solves the puzzle, imho.

>> ThumbStrips for IE. Always something that is in the back of our minds. If Firefox users are finding this useful, what about all those IE users?

Like I said, by no means is this a fixed list or even an exhaustive one, but it’s a glimpse into what we are thinking about. So, what do you think?

We are so excited by the number of people who’ve already installed and started playing around with ThumbStrips! Thanks to early feedback we saw a few small bugs that needed fixed to make sharing ThumbStrips better. This new version (v1.0.1) lets you open a shared ThumbStrip with one click - minimizing the alert messages & actually opening the viewer right away. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

Have you ever been browsing online for a while, and when you try to go back to find something you swear you just saw, it seems to have vanished? You try sifting through the saved history, but it’s just a long list of site names, and after a dozen or so clicks all energy is lost. We know, it’s happened to us too… which is why we built ThumbStrips!

This Firefox extension creates a filmstrip of thumbnails that visually shows you all the places you’ve visited online. You can then scan your ThumbStrip and get back to what were looking for quickly. Maybe you want to save or share a ThumbStrip to show your friend how you decided on your new digital camera, or to help your parents find the best prices for their vacation plans. It’s an easy one-click download, so go ahead… give it a shot and let us know what you think!