Filed under: Microsoft, Mozilla, Browsers
Firefox 3.6 has juicy Superbar integration with Windows 7 (and you can disable it)
Yesterday I told you about the new Firefox 3.6 Beta -- and today, I can show you a neat bit of Windows 7 integration. Windows 7 uses Microsoft's Aero window manager and theme -- you've probably heard about it, or learnt to hate it in Vista -- and in it there's a cool technology called 'Aero Peek'. As you can see in the screenshot above, in Firefox 3.6 Beta, Aero Peek is now fully enabled, and smoother than its implementation in 3.6b1pre.
Aero Peek lets you see what's going on in a particular program without having to actually click anything -- you can just mouse-over it on the alt-tab running-programs menu or on the Superbar. In Firefox 3.5 this works for the Firefox window itself, but not the tabs within. Now, in 3.6 Beta, you can see what's going on in any tab by hovering your mouse over the thumbnail. I do wonder if this requires massive disk-swapping though, or if it takes snapshots -- but I'm pretty sure Aero shows you the window contents in real-time. Either way, it's cool, and beats the hell out of tabbing through 20 different tabs to find what you're looking for.
Those of you that are already using 3.6 might have noticed another neat thing: when you have a bunch of tabs (10+ in our testing) open, you get a "buttonized" list of favicons and page titles, instead of thumbnails. You can still jump straight to a tab or see a preview from the Superbar.
Don't like the Aero Peek integration? You can easily disable it -- if you're worried about the potential performance hit -- just whack about:config into your Firefox address bar and set browser.taskbar.previews.enable to false.
[Download Firefox 3.6 Beta here]
Aero Peek lets you see what's going on in a particular program without having to actually click anything -- you can just mouse-over it on the alt-tab running-programs menu or on the Superbar. In Firefox 3.5 this works for the Firefox window itself, but not the tabs within. Now, in 3.6 Beta, you can see what's going on in any tab by hovering your mouse over the thumbnail. I do wonder if this requires massive disk-swapping though, or if it takes snapshots -- but I'm pretty sure Aero shows you the window contents in real-time. Either way, it's cool, and beats the hell out of tabbing through 20 different tabs to find what you're looking for.
Those of you that are already using 3.6 might have noticed another neat thing: when you have a bunch of tabs (10+ in our testing) open, you get a "buttonized" list of favicons and page titles, instead of thumbnails. You can still jump straight to a tab or see a preview from the Superbar.
Don't like the Aero Peek integration? You can easily disable it -- if you're worried about the potential performance hit -- just whack about:config into your Firefox address bar and set browser.taskbar.previews.enable to false.
[Download Firefox 3.6 Beta here]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sey Hee Park said 9:39AM on 11-01-2009
I tried the new beta and was kind of impressed by the integration with the Taskbar...until it started acting funky. Some of the tabs would just perpetually show the blue ring of busyness, or whatever it's called, and would never show a preview.
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Sebastian Anthony said 12:11PM on 11-01-2009
Yea, I had the same -- I think when the tab was swapped out to the page file. I guess it will be fixed by the proper release of 3.6.
iofthestorm said 2:41PM on 11-01-2009
Yeah, the developers have been trying to figure out what the problem is but they haven't been successful thus far. They're considering disabling it for the final release if it's still buggy, although I wonder how people would react to having a feature disabled that was enabled in the beta. Still unsure whether they're going to remove the code completely or just pref it away.
Sebastian Anthony said 2:51PM on 11-01-2009
Ahah! Thanks for the tip!
Platinum_Skeet said 1:24PM on 11-04-2009
I would just like them to making Firefox boot faster but, we'll probably have to wait for that feature in 4.0....
Joshua Meadows said 10:26AM on 11-01-2009
In terms of resource overhead I believe that it doesn't make anything worse to have the thumbnails turned on. The Vista/7 desktop window manager has to draw the contents anyway so it simply uses that same thing for the taskbar thumbnails (which aren't technically thumbnails since they are real-time as you asked). Unless the application is minimized, in which case you don't see a preview window because the DWM isn't concerned with the program anymore.
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Sebastian Anthony said 12:12PM on 11-01-2009
Even if you minimise it, you still get the 'peek' from the minimised Superbar icon. Perhaps only while it's in memory... but it does work here!
Brent Schmidt said 10:45AM on 11-01-2009
I thought it was cool for about five minutes, then it just got to be too much for me. I much prefer the old way. Also don't like how opening a new tab loads it directly next to the tab you're currently on and not at the end of the other tabs you may have open.
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Sebastian Anthony said 12:13PM on 11-01-2009
Yeah -- you used to have to use an add-on for that bit of functionality. I'm sure you'll be able to remove it with an add-on too :P
CoBfan1987 said 11:26AM on 11-01-2009
thank you for this paragraph!!!
Don't like the Aero Peek integration? You can easily disable it -- if you're worried about the potential performance hit -- just whack about:config into your Firefox address bar and set browser.taskbar.previews.enable to false.
I find that feature annoying :-P
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kojo87 said 1:55PM on 11-01-2009
i never understood why some people hate Aero Peek (or Aero in general) please enlighten me
KeegdnaB said 1:41PM on 11-01-2009
I didn't think tab previews were coming until 3.7?
I guess they jump[list]ed ahead (sorry for the pun)
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Sebastian Anthony said 1:44PM on 11-01-2009
Yeah, I guess this one made it to the Beta. It's still pretty finicky, and not configurable -- maybe it just slipped in, for a bit of extra testing :)
Jeff K said 2:57PM on 11-01-2009
I've been using the new integration from the nightlys for a while. I love it overall but one thing annoys the hell out of me. When you click on the button on the taskbar it just pops up the Aero peek and not the browser itself. This makes getting back tot he same tab you were on difficult.
I would love it if hitting the button would be able to bring up the browser window and the aero peek. Of course with multiple windows this might not be ideal. I'd love it to be configurable.
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charlesjurries said 3:47PM on 11-01-2009
Agreed! I'd love to have the Aero preview if I double clicked or something, but... I do like just clicking to bring my browser back up...
cmsb55 said 2:11AM on 11-03-2009
I would just like it if it behaved like all other applications do when it comes to Aero Peek. I can just hover over the icon of a running program to make the preview pop up on most programs and click it to bring the program to the front. Why Fx 3.6 doesn't do this is beyond me.
mbslrm said 1:55PM on 11-01-2009
Doesn't IE8 have the option to close tabs from the taskbar in addition?
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Sebastian Anthony said 2:05PM on 11-01-2009
Yep, IE8 works just like Firefox -- Aero Peek on each tab, and lets you close tabs (something you can't yet do in FF, though I'm sure it'll follow).
Ben said 1:58PM on 11-01-2009
I probably wont be using the aero peek integration, tabs are fine for me.
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dmitr77 said 3:36PM on 11-01-2009
The previews for some of mine are also not displaying.
I think instead of this feature that sorta works I would have like to have Jumplists. The programs that have then have boosted my abilities to use them.
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