Clusterurl's Blog

We were super pleased this month to see that the Official Add-ons for Firefox download site (AMO) promoted Cluster tabs for Firefox as a ‘recommended add-on’.

This recommended status should help us gain awareness and help more people to reduce their tab overload and get a better browsing experience.

As a quick update, you may be interested to learn that we’ve had a steady start to the adoption of the cluster tabs add-on and clusterURL service so far with just over 13,000 installations. Its been rewarding to find that people who’ve been using cluster tabs are pleased with how simple, powerful and easy it is to integrate cluster tabs into their everyday web browsing activity.

One of the most popular aspects seems to be that we do not ask for any registration or email address in order to use the add-on and accompanying clusterurl.com web service. We felt it was important that the service feel free and open and works in the same way that the Firefox browser does as you don’t have to give your email address to install a web browser like Firefox either.

If you don’t use Firefox we recommend you get Firefox and install the cluster tabs add-on and experience the benefits for yourself.

There have been some great improvements launched today  in version 1.1.1 of the Cluster Tabs for Firefox Add-on, check it out by downloading cluster tabs from the Mozilla Add-ons Site.

Note: If you have the add-on installed you can get it by selecting Tools > Add-ons from the menu in Firefox then click ‘Find updates” button and follow the instructions.

The main headline is that clusters can now be created via a new web form!  Just head on over to www.clusterurl.com/create
 
If your new to clustering we should also explain that using the add-on for Firefox enables cool thumbnails to be made and easy posting to social networks plus you get the benefit of putting-tabs-back into Cluster tabs!

Noteworthy improvements also include …

1. New ability to post cluster tabs to: FriendFeed, Mozillaca and MySpace in addition to Twitter, & Facebook already available in version 1.0

2. You can now re-arrange thumbnails of tabs within a Cluster Tab by dragging and dropping them, just click and hold any thumbnail to drag it to a new position. This has been a popular request from our users and we are pleased to be able to fit this one into this release, it works really well.



3. The ability for you to add optional tags to clusters you create enables search engines to find them easier. All you have to so is add them when you are adding a description and you are all set.
 



4. You can see which country any cluster tab was created in, just look at the small grey text at the footer of any cluster.

5. You can now refresh individual thumbnails within cluster tabs you’ve created (should the page change) Just hover over the thumbnail and click on the ‘refresh thumbnail’ link



6. Thumbnail generation has improved to avoid blank thumbnails

7. Resolved add-on conflicts with NoScript add-on



8. An arrow button instead of “x” button is shown on any tabs opened from a cluster tab in your browser to indicate that,  ‘closing’ is really ‘returning’ the tab to the cluster tab it came from. 


We hope you enjoy Cluster tabs for Firefox, if you have any ideas we’d love to hear from you either by posting here in this blog or by heading over to the Clusterurl support forum at Getsatistaction.com

You can follow our updates on www.twitter.com/clusterurl – we’ll follow you back!

If  you’d like to write your own blog review about our service we’ll gladly feature a link back to you from our blog here.

Enjoy!

It’s great to see that there are already over 3000 downloads of the Cluster Tabs for Firefox add-on within the first week of launch without any direct promotion by us yet.

We’ve been rolling out the service while attempting to ‘do things right’ in terms of having had a pre-release testing period of two weeks with around 400 users before going public last week and slowing growing to over 3000 downloads of the Cluster Tabs for Firefox add-on in our first public week.

The feedback we’ve had from our fellow humans in our first week has been encouraging, here’s a couple of notable comments we found on twitter:

Trying Cluster tabs for Firefox and loving it!! http://twitter.com/epedreno
Quite possibly the most brilliant FF add-on. Really http://twitter.com/timdunlop

In the interests of balance, we had one complaint via the Mozilla add-ons site from a user who didn’t realize that Cluster Tabs have Public web addresses. We understand that sometimes people like to dive right in and not read the packaging, we do it too sometimes ourselves, like people who find out drinks are too hot or food is too spicy the hard way. We understand the confusion, our bad so we’ll think of better ways to make it clearer that cluster tabs have public (anonymous) URLs. The good news here is that we provided what we think is good support, reached out via email, removed the cluster on request and explained why Cluster Tabs are public so they can be socially shared and we think our co-human was happy at the end of the day albeit suffering from a chalky tongue.

So lets all sing after three… one, two, three… ”Ooooh, cluster tabs are public. Public cluster tabs are.” & repeat.

btw – did you know cluster tabs are public? No seriously, joking apart…

All Cluster Tabs have public URLs that you can share with others. But don’t worry they are anonymous too which means no one knows who created them. At the end of the day, all your sharing in the clusterurl.com address are links to pages already on the web.

Clusterurl.com pages do not have any of your browsing history attached with them, that information is stored on your computer only.

We think that social sharing of Clusters is one of the cornerstones of the product and the thing we get most excited about here. Our dream is to find a cluster of something really useful, just at the right moment when we were looking for something. That would be neat! Until then we are enjoying having a clutter free tabbed browsing experience!

We have also had a lot of people ask us to enable ‘private clusters. It’s probably best we make a separate blog post about it because this one is becoming too long already. We’d welcome your input and thoughts on the subject though. For now we celebrate the fact that all Clusters are public for everyone to benefit from.

So what’s new after week one?

We’ve been busy working on polishing Firefox add-on code re-factoring while improving efficiency of the back end service but that isn’t what interests most people, so you’ll be glad to know we’ve added some useful features too!

From today you’ll be able to update your Cluster Tabs for Firefox add-on (to version 1.0.3) to enable you to post public cluster tabs directly to Friendfeed and Mozillaca in addition to the Facebook and Twitter which were already there. We’ve also added a nice little visual feature that lets you know that your cluster tab has been posted successfully too.

You’ll also me able to right web links on any page and add them to clusters too without having to open the page they are linked to. A small but helpful little feature non the less.

For the Uber geeks amongst us, you’ll no doubt be excited to tell your friends that you can now add tabs to clusters via the right click ‘tab context menu” which is great for people who want to disable the “+” button on tabs in the add-on preference settings.

If your a human who clusters, thanks we hope you’ll like what we have in store for you in future months.

If not please take the Cluster Tabs for Firefox add-on for a test ride, you’ll be glad you did, phew no more tab overload!

Happy Clustering :)

The Cluster tabs add-on for Firefox has been rolled out live and public on the Mozilla add-ons network this afternoon (PDT USA) after just over a weeks work of in-the-wild testing with over 400 installations by Firefox users.

Download the Cluster tabs add-on for Firefox

Decrease memory, increase speed.

Tabs held within a cluster tab stop using memory which means your browser will perform better with less tabs open.

Close tab, keep history.

Tabs within a cluster tab retain history which means that you can carry on from where you left off. Close any tab and it will return to the cluster tab it came from.

No registration & anonymous

No sign up, simply install and go. Cluster tabs for Firefox and clusterurl.com are anonymous and free. No spyware. Authored by Glaxstar a leading professional Firefox add-on agency (del.ico.us, eBay, Digg, Yahoo, Google, Mozilla Jetpack).

Spin copies of clusters

When you add or remove tabs from a cluster you did not create yourself, a copy is made for you and a new clusterURL is spun out into the web!

Accidental genius.

As you cluster tabs into things you are interested in. Your natural behavior incidentally creates high contextual relevance between the things you cluster together. Your a genius and you didn’t know it!

Your history is private.

History in tabs within Cluster URLs is retained in your browser only. No one sees anyone else’s history.

Get Clusterting!

So there you have it. Browse faster, reduce tab overload, effortlessly cluster relevant things, and give your poor browser a break!

For more information visit http://www.clusterurl.com