ThumbStrips: Firefox Plug-in Keeps Visual Track of Where You’ve Been

Boy, I spend a lot of time visiting web pages and following links.  When I’m doing research, I flip from web page to web page and sometimes can’t figure out where I’ve been, when I find a page that interests me and want to give credit to the referrer.

ThumbStrips is a Firefox plug-in that can help solve my problem.  It puts a graphic filmstrip-like panel of thumbnails across the bottom of the Firefox page with thumbnails of all the pages I’ve visited.  (You can turn off the recording if you want to go some place that you don’t wish to keep a graphic reminder -  I guess pron-mode).

When you want to return to the page, click on it’s thumbnail.  If you have multiple Firefox windows open, each window keeps track of it’s own pages with a separate Thumbstrip.  The thumbnail includes the time of the last visit and the scrolling position within the page.  Thumbnail can be annotated with comments or deleted.

ThumbStrips was developed by a research group called Intuit Labs within Intuit, the Quicken and TurboTax folks.

Download ThumbStrips plugin here. [via downloadsquad]

Full feature set from the product page, after the jump.

The various features include:

• showing time of last visit. The ThumbStrip displays the time you last saw each page, right below each thumbnail. And it’s meaningful; instead of just a date and time, it tells you precisely how long ago it was.
• capturing page scroll position. As you scroll up and down a page, the page’s thumbnail shows exactly what you see on the screen. And when you click a previous thumbnail, it will take you to the exact spot where you last were.
• resizability. Whether you like the thumbnails small or large, you can find a height for your needs. Simply drag the bar separating the ThumbStrip from the page, and the thumbnails will move right with you.
• smart tab behavior. Each separate Firefox window has its own ThumbStrip, and within a window, the window’s ThumbStrip will capture thumbnails from every tab. So you can keep using tabbed browsing to your heart’s content, without fear of losing pages. You can even middle-click or Ctrl+click thumbnails to open them in a new tab.
• multiple ways to scroll. By default, you can scroll through thumbnails by simply sliding your mouse left and right along the ThumbStrip, so you can find pages faster. If you prefer another method, you can turn mouse scrolling off from the ThumbStrip menu under Options and use either the DVD-type controls at the top, or the old-school scrollbar at the bottom of the window.
• starting/stopping recording. If you want to browse without taking new thumbnails, you can stop recording for as long as you want. You can access this option not only from the ThumbStrip menu, but also by right-clicking either the toolbar button or the status bar icon. In addition, you can use the View menu option, or for the keyboard users, you can press Ctrl+Shift+S or F4.
• instantaneous search. As you type, thumbnails will disappear and appear in the blink of an eye. And everything within every page is searched, so if you read it, you can find it. Click the Clear link to instantly show every thumbnail again.
• filtering by domain. If you want to see thumbnails from only one or more particular sites, you can filter the ThumbStrip by domains. The filter can be set to any combination possible; for example, if you want to see only Wikipedia and Google pages, go to the ThumbStrip menu and set the filter to show en.wikipedia.org, google.com and nothing else. Turn the filter off at any time by setting it to show all domains.
• sorting. We often visit a page multiple times (for example, a search results page). To handle multiple visits, the ThumbStrip condenses all the visits into one thumbnail, and sorts different thumbnails so that the most recently viewed thumbnails are at the end. As you browse, the thumbnails will even resort themselves instantly, without any effort on your part. If you want to change this default behavior, you can do so from the ThumbStrip menu under Sort.
• saving and loading thumbstrips. When bookmarking single pages isn’t enough, try saving your thumbstrips. Delete thumbnails you don’t want (by right-clicking on the thumbnail), or filter them out, and save the thumbnails for later access. You can even save them to disk, so that you can share thumbstrips with friends and family. This is ideal for collaborative projects, academic research, step-by-step tutorial creation, unfinished window shopping, and more.
• drag and drop placement. Just move thumbnails around to organize the filmstrip the way you want before saving and sending.
• add comments so that you can easily take notes on a specific thumbnail. Notes that are saved, searchable, and shareable as well!