ThumbStrips: A Filmstrip Of Screenshots
Duncan Riley
26 comments »
ThumbStrips is a Firefox plugin that records a filmstrip of screenshots.
The plugin comes from Intuit’s Innovation Lab, an Intuit R&D unit headed by former General Manager of Quicken Roy Rosin.
ThumbStrips records a filmstrip of a users browsing session to make it easy to return to and share pages a user has visited. The plugin was developed after observing people struggling with the back button and history lists. A sharing component supports collaborative search or people doing research projects, trying to share with each other where they’ve been and what they found there.
The fairly new plugin has been downloaded 20,000 times so far.
The issue of remembering a site you’ve visited hours ago, since closed, and then is needed again is fairly regular occurrence, at least for me. ThumbStrips is a clever idea that provides an easy way of accessing a browser’s history.
+20K download already. Covered all over the web. Does this deserve again a ‘plugin description’ on the frontpage of TC?
The licence is scary:
1.2. Testing of Health Care-Related Software
(i) Tester hereby acknowledges and agrees that information Tester may provide to Intuit or its affiliates or that Tester may obtain from any health plan, or that is obtained on Tester’s behalf, through use of the Pre-Release Software, including but not limited to any health information (collectively, “Personal information”), once provided to Intuit or obtained by Tester or on Tester’s behalf, shall not be considered to be “Protected Health Information” for the purposes of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (Pub. L. 104-191). Tester agrees that any such Personal Information may be used by Intuit or its affiliates in support of testing activities.
Vinod
It was pitched to us in the last 24 hours. If it’s been covered elsewhere so be it, I haven’t seen it before and others may not have…and it’s a pretty nifty plugin.
Thanks for the news, Duncan – I’m really gonna use it.
However this is not a plugin, but extension. Plugin = QuickTime in Firefox for example.
Well you brought it to my attention, so “Thanks”.
Riddle
to be totally correct in Firefox speak it’s an Add-on, but they’re all plugins to me
I can see that being useful, I would download it only for some reason firefox runs slower than safari so I’ve been sticking to safari.
anything that keeps a person from a) thinking or b) reading is good. Screenshots sequential is *genius*
p.s. I am reading Evelyn Wood SRP… Anyone wanna be in the club?
I guess it can have some use for some people but it sounds like it could be pretty raw software and that Intuit is eventually going to charge for the final product.
Me I use the tab feature in FF to remember what I need. Everything else goes into my Favorites. I have 81 tabs open in FF right now. These are things I want to review or follow [lol].
Oh, if you don’t want to “check to agree” the terms and conditions (which seem a bit lengthy for a ff add-on), goto http://innovation.intuit.com/d.....-1.0.2.xpi
Great extension, which thumbnail service is being used? (in house developed or external software)
The extension uses the firefox canvas functionality. The only downside to this is that plugins don’t render on the canvas, which means that youtube videos and flash won’t appear in the thumbnails.
It looks great. I will definitely give it a try.
That’s a great idea, just for navigation. I’m definitely going to give it a shot.
-Chris
http://www.nerdcouncil.com
Yeah looks great;
-wonder where this fits in at intuit
This is pretty cool. I like the ability to perform a search across screenshots.
I’m a bit disapointed; it doesn’t save screenshots for your entire history.. so it’s only usefull for one session. Still, nicely executed and works really will!
Yeah, viewing history from a week back at least could’ve been better, but I love the concept anyway.
Pretty slick. Wish there was a way to show the different tabs I had open at the time.
The concept looks somewhat similar to the stacking feature introduced by Cooliris Previews for Firefox. Both serve as “temporary bookmarks”.
See http://venturebeat.com/2007/06.....nd-stacks/
Good work guys! Wayyy cool. Its on my browser as we speak.
The only problem with these firefox extensions is that too many of them + greasemonky = slow.
I like this one though, going to give it a shot.
Interesting plugin… will check it out for my PC at work.
Don’t know if you’ve seen this before, but Smile On My Mac has made “BrowseBack,” a Mac app that sits in the background snapping PDF captures of every page visited in Safari + Firefox + IE + Opera + Camino, etc., available for at least a year. It got a MacWorld Best in Show award in 2006.
It’s available for $30 at “http://www.smileonmymac.com/browseback/”
Even better, you can get it as part of the current MacHeist bundle on top of the MacUpdate application bundle: “http://www.mupromo.com/?buy=heist”
8 apps for $49: Little Snitch, GraphicConverter, Fetch, iWOW, GarageSale, Cocktail, ProfCast, and Amadeus Pro + BrowseBack, Exces, Linkinus + more.
Indeed an extremely practical add-on for Firefox, I already checked it out and I enjoyed it.
I work at Intuit’s Innovation Lab and wanted to thank you all for the great feedback and ideas on ThumbStrips - keep it coming. We are planning the next versions of TS and are interested in what TS does that you love, and what you wish TS did but it currently doesn’t.
Concrete Stain: I know this isn’t the traditional accounting or tax software you might expect to see from Intuit, but we are interested in solving important problems for people, and looking for innovative ways and areas to do this. TS is an example of that for Intuit.
Mark: We decided to use a standard EULA for all the products on the site - so we can focus on creating innovative products rather than legal docs. With that said, we have heard some feedback and concerns about this, so we’re working with the legal team to streamline the EULA so it makes more sense for the products we have now.
iNeuron: There is a save feature in TS so you can save your session and revisit later, or start recording again from the end of the strip. If you’ve tried that and are still looking for something different, please let us know.
William: The thumbnails are created using the canvas element from Mozilla.