New Tool in FireFox Make You Surf Faster

Google has just added a new feature to their FireFox Toolbar. Tried and trusted features already include bookmarking, ‘send to’, and AutoFill. The latest development to be added involves the page you see whenever you open a new tab. That’s right, that blank page you see.

Customize your tabs for faster surfing

You can customize the page you see whenever you open a new tab with the current version of the Google Toolbar. After downloading the Toolbar, any new tab will first show your favorite sites as thumbnails, and a list of pages you recently visited or bookmarked.

Here is what you should be seeing:

I previously wasn’t a Google Toolbar user yet, so I just installed it myself. The data shown on your fresh tabs is housed on your computer, so this means two things: Google doesn’t get the information about your surfing behavior, but it also means I am not actually seeing thumbnails displayed yet. I’m guessing it will take a little surfing before anything pops up. Supposedly, this happens automatically with this new version of Toolbar though, so we will see.

Don’t like what you see?

Although the pages shown are supposed to be your most visited sites, perhaps you don’t want other users to know where you enjoy surfing to. If you don’t like what is showing, you can edit the thumbnails that are displayed on your new tabs, or just restore the page to a blank page again. To restore it to a blank page, edit your browser or toolbar options.

To remove thumbnails from your new tab page, do the following:

1. Open a new tab.
2. Click the Edit thumbnails located at the bottom of the page.
3. Click the X icon for each thumbnail you don’t want appearing on your new tab.
4. Click the Done button to save your changes.

Has anyone successfully used this new feature yet? Did you also find it took a little while for any thumbnails to show up?