Firefox Add-on: Thumbstrips

I am pretty sure that while researching on a topic you would suddenly remember something you want to access, but you would have forgotten the website or the search query. Everyone would have faced this situation at one time or the other and would have spent a few hours trying to get that information. If you want a simpler solution than breaking your head trying to recollect the website, then Thumbstrips is for you. This is available as a Firefox extension and this is all the more reason for you to start using it.

This extension is especially useful if you are researching on a topic or searching for something on Google. You can always use personalized Google searches or use the Bookmarks and History bars to figure out what you had done, but this is an easy way out. Just tell Thumbstrips when to start recording and when to stop. Voila you have the list of sites in which you had researched for some topic.

Download and installation of Thumbstrips is similar to any Firefox extension. Once you start the download, you will most probably face the situation wherein you will have to allow innovation.intuit.com to install files. Once you allow this the installation happens pretty smoothly.

Once the installation is complete and you restart Firefox, you will notice an icon on the toolbar, just on the left of the Address bar. Click on that icon and you will see Thumbstrips pop-up at the bottom of your screen. It doesn’t occupy too much space (in the picture above I have increased the size to make it clear) and can also track the sites when it has been minimized. It also has the option of “Start Recording” and “Stop Recording” (Blue button on the top left hand corner in the picture below). So, when you are browsing for the sake of browsing you can turn this off. It will lessen the load on the system.

You can also share your strips, if you want. It might just help someone else, if they are browsing on the same topic. But, the user community hasn’t posted too many strips so far.

Just to ensure that your mail pages aren’t captured, start using https:// instead of http:// while accessing mail (gmail allows this. I am not sure of other mail service providers). Or you can specify what all sites to Filter. By default, https:// sites aren’t added to the strip.

I don’t know if this interferes with any other FF extension. It doesn’t with the 20 odd extensions that I am using. But, leave a comment if you feel that your extensions are behaving crazily.

Thumbstrips

Download Thumbstrips (Size: around 850KB) (version 1.0.2)

[via Digital Inspiration]

Technorati tags: Thumbstrips, Firefox, Add on