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Filed under: Beta, Browsers

Desktop lets you treat Firefox bookmarks like desktop icons


Desktop is a Firefox add-on that's based on the same concept as Speed Dial for the Opera web browser. Both tools let you create a series of thumbnail shortcuts for frequently visited web pages that will be available every time you open a new tab.

But what makes Desktop different is that you can change the look and feel of the new tab page by dragging, dropping, and resizing thumbnails. In fact, it makes blank Firefox tabs feel a lot like the Windows desktop, which is probably why it's called Desktop.

You can also add search widgets, and folders to your blank tab layout.

The plugin is listed as an experimental Firefox add-on, which means it hasn't been tested extensively. But it seemed fairly stable with Firefox 3.0.10. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work with Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 yet.

Filed under: Windows, Mozilla, Open Source, Browsers, Windows x64

New Tab King for Firefox offers a clever alternative - with boss mode!


Your new tab page is obviously a pretty important part of the Firefox experience. Both Mozilla and Google have pretty slick options you can plug in, but you may not have heard of New Tab King yet.

Like other options, NTK taps into your recent usage to display frequently visited sites and recently closed tabs. You can toggle the display of your used sites to include either all browsing or only sites that are in your bookmarks. There's also a list of Windows shortcuts included for quick access to your My Documents folder, Notepad, Calculator, and Windows Media Player. You can also specify a custom background image.

And let's not forget about the boss mode button! Click it, and New Tab King automatically switches to a pre-defined display which includes sites like Harvard Business Publishing, Wall Street Journal, NASA, and the BBC ticker.

No, it won't destroy all traces of any questionable browsing you've been doing, but with boss mode on you can at least quickly shield your other tabs from prying eyes with control + t.

Edit: as noted by our commenters, this one is Windows only. The Firefox addon does state that, and while this post is tagged "windows" I didn't state that directly.

Filed under: Mozilla, Beta

Mozilla unveils "cognitive shield" new tab concept for Firefox

Cognitive Shield
When you open a new tab in Firefox 3.0 you see a blank page. Mozilla has been working on ways to make that page more useful for a few weeks now. Mozilla isn't the first company to rethink the blank window. Opera has offered a "speed dial" feature with user-customizable thumbnails for your favorite web sites for a while. And Google Chrome automatically generates thumbnails from your most frequently visited pages.

But Mozilla doesn't just want to give you quick access to the sites you visit most. The team also wants to make sure the new tab area isn't too distracting. And that's led to a completely new concept that the developers are calling a "cognitive shield."

What happens is that Firefox will keep track of your recently and frequently visited pages. But instead of showing you a list of links or thumbnails every time you open a new tab, Firefox will show you a dull gray set of icons for those pages. If you type an address or search term into the location bar, you'll never see anything other than this unremarkable list of icons. But if you scroll your mouse over the page it will expand into a colorful list of web sites and favicons.

Unlike Opera's speed dial, the Firefox bookmarks are automatically generated. But unlike Google Chrome's thumbnails, you can add or remove links from the Firefox new tab page. You can also disable this behavior by clicking the asterisk in the bottom left corner of the screen.

In order to try out this concept design, you'll need to have the most recent beta version of Firefox 3.1 and then you can download and install the New Tab prototype add-on. Eventually this feature or one very much like it could find its way into a future version of Firefox.

Filed under: Productivity, Mozilla, Search, Browsers

Firefox's new tab page adds a bit of RSS

Built-in start pages are all the rage in the latest browsers. Chrome and Safari each show slick-looking selection of your most visited pages when you open a new tab, and now Firefox is getting into the game with its own new tab page for version 3.5 (formerly known as version 3.1). The Firefox About:Tab page isn't as flashy as the other two, but it might be a bit more practical, now that it features a little bit of RSS.

Firefox's new tab screen-- previously covered on Download Squad -- now shows an unobtrusive list of your top sites down the side of the page, instead of the full-page graphical layouts other browsers use. It also shows a button to Google search or Google Map whatever's in your clipboard with one click. The real advantage of the list format over the graphical version wasn't obvious to me until the latest version of About:Tab, though: the list is ideal for displaying a few RSS items from your top sites, so you know if they've been updated before you click through. This new RSS feature works automatically, and -- for me, anyway -- it gives Firefox the edge over Chrome or Safari's start pages.

Filed under: Mozilla, Beta, Browsers

Mozilla rethinks the behavior of new browser tabs

New Firefox tab
A few months ago Mozilla embarked on a quest to determine a way to make new browser tabs more useful. Right now, when you open a new tab in Firefox you get a blank page. Compare that with Google Chrome, Safari, or Opera, which show you a list of shortcuts to your bookmarked or frequently visited pages.

Today Mozilla's Aza Raskin shared some of the team's conclusions, based on user feedback. Basically, most of the time when you open a new tab it's because you're going to load a web page or conduct a search. The image above shows a screen that tries to help you accomplish these things without getting in your way or requiring much user interaction.

Along the right side of the window you'll find a list of frequently visited web sites. The list is generated automatically, much like the shortcuts that pop up when you launch a new tab in Google Chrome. So there's nothing too new there. But the cooler stuff takes place on the left side of the screen.

When you open a new tab to start a search, there's a decent chance that you've highlighted and copied some text from another tab. So if you've already copied some text to your clipboard, you should be able to conduct a search in the new tab with a single click. Ultimately this action would be tied to your default search engine. Likewise, if you've selected URL, you'll be able to open it in a new tab with a single click.

You can take this new tab feature for a spin by installing the latest development build of Firefox 3.1 and then installing the New Tab proptype plugin.

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Mozilla, Freeware, Browser Tips

NewTabURL helps you stay on task with Merlin Mann's help

Is this really what you want to be doing right now?Love him or hate him, productivity blogger Merlin Mann has come up with a great way to help keep yourself on track. The idea is to avoid the seductions of the web by stopping a moment to make sure that you're spending your time on what you really want to be spending it on.

In his blog post on the subject, Merlin describes opening folders full of bookmarks all in one go, which have the potential to suck up huge amounts of time. He therefore created a page on his site that asks him "Is this what you want to be doing right now?", and included it as the first bookmark in each of his folders of bookmarks.

While this is a great idea, if you don't operate the same way, opening complete folders of bookmarks all at once, this probably won't help you much. But what if you could set your browser to open this page by default every time you opened a blank new tab or new browser window?

With the NewTabURL extension for Firefox, you can do exactly that. Slick, and helpful.

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