Quick Dial Firefox Plugin 0

Ever since the Opera browser introduced its Speed Dial over a decade ago, I’ve been a fan of “speed dials.” If you haven’t used one, a “Speed Dial” enables you to put links to favorite websites in the “new tab” page of your browser. (I stopped using Opera when it went to the Dark Side.)

For a while I used Seamonkey, because, like the old Opera, it included an email client, an RSS reader, and a newsreader. I quite like Seamonkey, but, since the Seamonkey sync is broken and I use multiple computers, I now rely on Firefox as my default browser.

I recently stumbled over a “speed dial” for Firefox called “Quick Dial” which I quite like for two primary reasons: It will sync in a normal Firefox sync without your having to create some account on somewhereyouneverheardof.com, and it allows you to select a background image from your own images library.

You can also configure individual “dials.” For example, if the default title of the dial is “News you can use from newsy.com,” you can edit that down to “newsy.com.” You can also group links in folders, and, as with other speed dial plugins, configure the number of columns and rows.

Note that images, placement of links on the page, and edits do not sync, but the links do.

I recommend Quick Dial highly; indeed, I even trundled over to the maintainer’s site and made a little donation.

Here’s a screenshot from my Debian Sid machine:

As an aside, I now use Akregator for RSS feeds; Sylpheed for email, and Pan for newsgroups, but, alas, I fear that newsgroups are fading into irrelevance.