New Tab (the King) for Firefox blog

Check it out – Looking forward to your feedback as usual!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10828/versions/5.0.3

Features:
+ Thumbnails mode is immediately shown after initial clean install
+ Thumbnails view: allow dragging and pinning of thumbnails
+ Auto-refresh of thumbnails mode on the NTK screen
+ Removed Analytics view
+ Changed action links in Classic view to icon buttons
+ History is calculated only once a day to reduce overhead on every screen change
+ Default empty colored space when there’s no thumbnails
+ Changed thumbnails image fetching timeout to minimal
+ Actions in thumbnails view: remove/refresh/pin (moved top caption favicon + site name to bottom)

Defaults changes:
+ Bubbles background
+ Don’t show sites you love
+ Don’t show web shortcuts
+ Support FF up to version 4.0b9pre

Style
+ Replaced setting cog icon
+ Sidebbar widths are not consistent
+ Details action link in Classic view wasn’t working…
+ Feedback link on web shortcuts was broken…
+ Bubbles are not in the middle of the screen on wide screen
+ Thumbnails view: move stuff 5px to the left
+ Bottom buttons in thumbnails view is cut when there are only 18 most used sites
+ Thumbnails favicon + site title line: (i) reduce height by 2px AND (ii) reduce max number of chars by 2. utilize max screen width
+ Sidebar width is not utilizing on wide screen
+ No spacing on sidebar between recently closed and app shortcuts
+ Theme4: sidebar collapse/expand section is not really visible!
+ Theme1: title fonts are hard to read!
+ Thumbnails should have more resolution (and no black border)

Funny how these settings turned out to be really big over time. NTK 4.0.9 is sorting out so they are more self explanatory – your feedback appreciated if these are not

Background settings


General settings


Search shortcuts settings


Application shortcuts settings


Web shortcuts settings


Most used sites settings


Recently closed tabs settings

Misc settings

Thanks Jose for finding this solution.  So this post is dedicated for folks who are into running both Speeddial and New Tab King without conflicts!

In the Speeddial program under options there is a selection under Automatic Load: “Load in blank new tabs”.  if this is set to off then New Tab King runs with speeddial without any problems.

Thanks again Jose’!

New Tab King main search bar – aka NTK SmartBar(tm) offers a few advanced featured.  Have you used all of these:

1. Top Destinations: by typing a number + ENTER you have a fast navigation to the Nth most popular site.  You can see the ranking on the left side of the most used histograms
2. Search Shortcuts: we know people are in a hurry and want to go to their destination the fastest way.  Take a look at the Settings… you’ll see a bunch of pre-configured shortcuts like ‘fb’ for Facebook.com or ‘go’ for Google.com
3. Web Search: enter any search phrase and Google will shout the answer
4. History Search: similarily to the built-in Firefox awesomebar support for history, we also project the last time you visited the site and the total viists

A couple of folks approached us and asked how to turn off the New Tab King toolbar icon we added in the latest version (2.1.2).  It’s basically in the Settings of the add-on (see screeshot here) – adding quick and detailed instructions here:

New Tab King options: toolbar button

1. From the top right of the add-on screen click on “Options…”
2. Select the “General” tab at the top of the settings dialog
3. Uncheck the checkbox labeled as: “Check for the New Tab King toolbar button on every Firefox restart“
4. Right click on the toolbar and choose Customize - remove the little NTK button from your toolbar
5. Restart!

We’re super excited about launching our latest themed-based release (2.1.0)

Screenshots attached here – which one is YOU?

New Tab King for Firefox 2.0.9 Preview

Get it from here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addons/versions/10828#version-2.0.9

So, let’s have a quick summary on what happened since NTK was officially launched (9½ week ago but who’s counting).

1- There are just about 33,400 results in Google mentioning NTK, including some heavy caliber tech blogs
2- 36,000 users downloaded it (that’s ~540 each day, and growing)
3- NTK is ranked #6 in Mozilla’s favorites under tabs section
4- Lebron went on an early vacation. again. god.

but now for the important stuff – what the people had to say:

A lot of Linux freaks, freaked out on us for be incompat. well, we got this fixed with a little help from a volunteering user. cheers, amigo.

Same goes for Mac. now we’re Mac oriented.

Almost all comments (not complaints – comments) included the expression “customize my own”. Here’s a real giant NTK leap: almost everything in your NewTabKing dashboard is customizable. You can choose your background image (or choose not to have one at all). You can pick your own application shortcuts. You can select the number of results that you get in your “Most Used Website” and in “Recently Closed Tabs”. View your “black listed” sites, and hand-pick some of them back to life. You can even set your own title. My title says something nasty about a huge company that starts with a “G” but that’s just my secret revenge.

Plus, we’ve added some other neat stuff, like:

Suggested sites – lets you see sites that are similar to the ones you’re usually visiting. Hey, perhaps you’ll find hidden treasures in the suggested sites list.

Auto-completion in your search bar – You know FireFox? same idea. only bigger.

Shorter loading time – No, I’m saying this for REAL. Try it yourself.

So where are all these improvements? Good question. We are waiting for the Mozilla testing crew to approve our new version 2, which is currently only available in their testing queue

Truth is, we didn’t think it would take that long… but guess what – you can help! If you download, try it,  and post a comment in our mozilla add-ons section, they say it quickens the process. Well, if you feel like it. no pressure.

We’ve gone a few miles since the April 9th release, but as far as we’re concerned the journey has just begun. We hope NewTabKing will become the best interface for new born tabs around the globe.

- Adam and Eddie

Patrick – appreciate the terrific review. We’d be honored to have you on the front page of

Tons of stuff.  Give us a try at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addons/versions/10828#version-2.0.3

* Autocomplete for searches

* Relevant suggested sites

* Configurations for your shortcuts and view