Thubnails please!

[Michael Goldstein]

For the fast explanation see the extension "SearchPreview" for Google.

That's what I've been lacking in Session Buddy for the years I've been using it.

Longer explanation:

Within each Saved Session, I'm very much lacking the ability to tick a checkbox that loads Page Previews (Thumbnails) for each site saved.

It would be even more amazing if the user could choose to snip a specific area within the linked-site to show as it's thumbnail... But that can come in later on of course... The main thing is the ability to see a thumbnail to begin with. Preferably with a setting that can be chosen per Saved Session.

P.S.

The "Export All" feature you added is wonderful! Thanks for that one XD

[Michael Goldstein]

*And by "Export All" I mean File Backup ^_^;

[Hans Meyer]

Yep we have been wanting to implement that and hope to eventually. 

Some initial considerations: 

- It's a relatively complex feature to implement robustly. Automatically determining/prioritizing a set of representative images for any given web page in a way that produces meaningful results with a generalized algorithm is not simple. A rule-based solution might work well but would be brittle and expensive to implement and maintain. I kind of like how the new Opera bookmarks work, but this still requires work on behalf of the user to select an appropriate image in many cases, often from choices that include a fair amount of noise.

- A robust implementation requires a mix of remote and local methods. Eg, since you can't reliably source a screenshot of a web page via the Chrome API, you need a server-based solution as a fallback. If it's coming from the server, you're not going to get a meaningful result for authenticated pages (which comprise a significant portion of traffic). On the other hand, a server-based solution theoretically can produce more reliable results because it can learn from the thumbnail selections users make over time for a particular web page (which in turn raises a privacy question). For the online-dependent piece, there's a recurring cost of bandwidth or 3rd party licensing. That would require this to be a paid feature. For the local piece, the application requires elevated permissions that allow it to read the content of any web page a user visits. That would require this to be an opt-in feature and may cast suspicion on the app.

- Performance and/or storage impacts would likely be a considerable portion of the costs to include in our consideration against overall benefit.

- Potential legal limitations of scraping pages to source images for a commercial purpose.

- Additional efforts to maintain the protection of user privacy. Eg, screengrabbing of pages or portions of pages that can include sensitive content may necessitate encryption and supplementary user controls.

- Other features comprising a significant amount of development effort are currently prioritized ahead of this feature.

Not to completely crush your dreams... like I said, it's definitely a feature we want to implement and hope to in the future. I just wanted to provide you with some context around why this may not get rolled out within a favorable time frame.

Cheers,

Hans

On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 7:25 PM, Michael Goldstein <trip...@gmail.com> wrote:

*And by "Export All" I mean File Backup ^_^;

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[Michael Goldstein]

Hmm...Those are some strong and valid points. I'm saddened to realize how complicated this feature could be to implement.
Is there an option to just add the simplest (even if more consuming for the user) option to start with?

I'm referring to a local cache of thumbnails on the user's side, saved only when prompted by the user and only in way of screen-snipping?

This is how I see it working (at least until it becomes higher priority to make a more elaborated feature as you've mentioned):

1. A user has to click a button on a session, the user is then prompted to choose a site-link within said session

or

another option would be to right click the Session Buddy within the actual specific tab he wants to save a thumbnail for, and choosing a (new) save thumbnail menu option

2. The user is then prompted to 'cut'/select/highlight a square out of the screen to 'print-screen'/'snip' ito the thumbnail

3. The new thumbnail is the saved on the local computer and from now on shows for that site on that saved session (or all sessions if it's somehow possible to link it that way)

4. Said thumbnail will be saved withing the Backup File when created, and restored with it when restored.

Is that, as I hope & suspect, something more manageable option to start with?

Thanks for keeping up with feature requests :)

Michael

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[Hans Meyer]

I'll have to give that some thought. Either way, thumbnails are prioritized behind a lot of other work, so this likely won't happen soon.

Hans

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[Michael]

Well, at least the idea is out there.

I'll take what I can get when I can get it :)

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[Pedro Coimbra]

Why complicate? Why not just store thumbnails of the websites at the moment the session is saved?