My New Favorite Firefox Add-on is…Speed Dial!

April 4, 2009

I’ve been an iGoogle fan for quite some time now.  I like to be able to access my most frequently used websites from a single page. Thanks to my friend and co-chik, Kim Beasley, my lament about not being able to access my favorites/bookmarks in every browser I use (and I regularly use at least four) was silenced when she told me about using the Google Bookmarks widget. It’s worked out GREAT but just like most people, my bookmarks have grown…and grown…and grown. Like most people, I also use a only a handful of my bookmarks frequently. Enter Speed Dial for Firefox.

Back when I was using Opera during the Browser Wars series, I particularly liked the built-in Speed Dial page. For those of you who aren’t familiar with what a Speed Dial page is, it’s a page that displays thumbnails that link to the websites you visit most frequently. You can add up to nine pages to your Speed Dial page, which is divided into three rows and three columns.  Obviously, I wasn’t the only one who liked the Speed Dial feature since before long, Firefox introduced the Speed Dial add-on that does the same thing in Firefox.  Just like in Opera, you could use the Speed Dial add-on to display nine of the websites you visit most frequently. How cool is that? Now I can use Opera AND Firefox and have Speed Dial in addition to iGoogle (which is one of my Speed Dial pages) to jump right to the sites I visit most frequently.

OK, now for the reasons Speed Dial for Firefox is my new favorite add-on:

• I can create groups in Speed Dial that each have their own Speed Dial page.
• I can create additional rows/columns for each (or all) of my groups so I can have more than just nine thumbnail views of my favorite websites.

If you use Firefox and you haven’t checked out Speed Dial, do it! Opera, you have some catching up to do by making your built-in Speed Dial page more customizable.

Posted in Views From The Coop