If there's a cool new feature in another web browser, you can be sure someone's going to turn it into a Firefox extension. So it should come as no surprise that one developer saw Opera's new "Speed Dial' feature and decided to bring it to Firefox.What's Speed Dial? Basically, Opera 9.2 provides you with screenshots for up to 9 websites when you load the browser. It's kind of like having 9 different homepages, which you can quick faster than you can pull up a bookmark toolbar. You can also refresh the screenshots.
The Firefox Speed Dial extension has the same basic idea. You can set it to show your Speed Dial page every time you open a blank window or a blank tab. It doesn't have all of the features of the Opera version. For example, you can't rearrange the order of your pages by dragging and dropping. And it appears that you cannot refresh the screenshots.
But still, if you want some of the benefits of using Opera without, you know, using Opera, you might want to check it out.
[via CyberNet]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
5-08-2007 @ 1:08PM
Manny Fleurmond said...
Isn't this just Foxpose?
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5-08-2007 @ 1:09PM
Fred said...
Okay, now we know software patenting IS important.
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5-08-2007 @ 1:22PM
IsNoGood said...
Ok, I been looking for something like this, what other browsers can do this ?
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5-08-2007 @ 1:22PM
bill said...
I hope it or something similar is integrated natively into Firefox, but in the meantime this add on is great. Also reviewed at http://bweaver.net/browser-speed-dial/
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5-08-2007 @ 1:54PM
Matthias said...
Well, in a way the Firefox-ripoff-crowd just behaves like the Chinese product-ripoff-crowd, I don't like any of those two...
I am using Opera for 4 or 5 years now, 3 on a Mac, by the way.
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5-08-2007 @ 1:54PM
Ryan Sullivan said...
This one is a good one too:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4810
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5-08-2007 @ 3:26PM
VV said...
Good ol' Firefox. As original as ever. They could have at least changed the name.
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5-08-2007 @ 3:26PM
Timothy said...
Seems kind of useless to me - isn't this what the Bookmarks toolbar is for?
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5-09-2007 @ 7:34AM
joe said...
Why do people insist on making FireFox do things it doesn't want to do?
If it's a good function, make FireFox do it natively. All these widgets are moronic.
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5-09-2007 @ 7:34AM
bean said...
As usual, Firefox copies Opera and the copy requires a plugin instead of an integrated experience and again, the result is inferior -- and it gets on Digg frontpage. Open source zealotry at its best -- I am making a living out of OSS but that does not mean I only use OSS...
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5-09-2007 @ 8:07AM
Giant said...
Filing a patent is like standing on the shoulders of giants and trying to charge everybody else to get on top of you.
Fuck patents!
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5-09-2007 @ 12:21PM
Kenny said...
Firefox is a good browser, nothing wrong with it and some of its extensions are really neat. Opera is a better browser. A friendly word to all those firefoxers out there (and while I'm at it, IE users as well): Try opera. it's going to be different so give yourself a few weeks to get familiar with it. explore its menus and especially its website to see all that you can customize (virtually everything)... Simply put, try Opera with an open mind and I bet, like me, you'll be convinced.
Oh and before anyone makes the mistake: The FULL version of Opera is now FREE and AD-FREE (and has been for years now).
www.opera.com
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5-09-2007 @ 1:23PM
keychain said...
I'd rather call firefox, "copyCATfox"!
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5-09-2007 @ 4:18PM
Josh said...
IE7 also has a speed dial type feature native to the browser. No one ever mentioned it to me.
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5-10-2007 @ 12:19AM
Drewsus said...
Opera is a great browser. With its mouse gestures, browsing is so much nicer. The only thing that stops me from continuing to use Opera is that it doesn't work with StumbleUpon. Thats the only thing. If it did work with StumbleUpon I would be using it today. I had previously been using it for what I would guess is at least 7 years.
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5-10-2007 @ 7:44AM
ss said...
geez all you whinging opera users sound alot like the same bunch of bedwetters who user linux and whine about windows.
do us all a favour and stfu and go over yourselves
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5-10-2007 @ 2:35PM
mks said...
Refresh of the thumbnails would really be great for this extension.
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5-12-2007 @ 8:33AM
Kenny said...
Drewsus, when you say that StumbleUpon doesn't work in Opera, did you mean that they don't offer a stumbleupon toolbar for Opera? The website works perfectly for me in my Opera 9.2.
Opera's page rendering is about as good as it gets these days. All browsers have trouble with some pages. I've found pages that render correctly in Opera but not in FF or IE, correctly in IE but not FF or Opera etc. etc. The problem isn't really the browsers, but the website designer that never learned what 'interoperability' means.
Anyhoo,
Just curious,
Kenny
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5-12-2007 @ 10:44AM
circuit breaker said...
Give me a break. Think of a situation where maybe someone might want to leave Opera for Firefox (it "could" happen) - this might help their transition if it was a favorite feature.
That's the strength of add-ons/plugins! Quit whining about Firefox being a copy, or unoriginal- a random developer from the community made this, to probably scratch an itch. It's not officially part of Firefox.
- A reluctant firefox user
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5-14-2007 @ 11:10PM
Trevor said...
Opera's a good browser, but lacks the functionality of Firefox. I've used them both for quite a while, and I dislike that tabs are above the address bar and you can't move them down. At least you couldn't with 9.0, the last version I tried. Also, there's a lot of features built into Opera that I don't want and won't use, but Firefox keeps most of that to a minimum and encourages extensions to be used for them instead, thus letting the user chose what functions they want and what they don't so they don't waste precious memory on wasted things. I play video games quite a bit, and I've noticed Opera gives me a LOT more lag than Firefox when I keep it open in the background.
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