Opera unveils "Speed Dial"

[Chode]

Recently I Posted regarding Opera's plans for a new feature, promising that "You have not seen it in a desktop browser before..."

With Weekly Build 8732, that feature has been revealed as "Speed Dial".

Opera's Johan Borg writes on the official Opera Desktop team blog:

Opera Mini already adds Speed Dial shortcuts to the first 9 links on the start page, so you can just press *1 to get to your favorite site on your phone. Now we do the same thing for desktop, where Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9 gives you direct access to your 9 favorites. When you open a new tab, the 9 Speed Dial sites will be displayed with pretty thumbnails, a single mouse click away.

Why Speed Dial?

Bookmarks often fall into two categories:

1) A bunch of sites you bookmark because you may want to visit them again someday

2) 5 or 6 sites you visit very often

Speed Dial is an elegant way to address the second category. When you open a new tab, it will often be to go to one of your favorite sites, so why not just show them there instead of an entirely blank page? Adding your favorites to Speed Dial is also very, very simple: Just click the button and choose a site from your Top 10 history or from the currently open tabs. Deleting them is just as simple, with the X in the upper right corner.

A screenshot of my current usage of "Speed Dial":

It should be noted, however, that this is a weekly build for beta testing. There are several outstanding known issues, and functionality may change dramatically as development approaches a public build.

Interesting new feature, and it's certainly something that I've never seen before in another browser :)

Sources

>Desktop Team Blog Post

>Opera 8732, Windows MSI

>Opera 8732, Windows Classic

>Opera 8732, Macintosh

>Opera 8732. Unix

[Danrarbc]

The thumbnails look a lot like the bookmarks portion of the Wii version of Opera actually, good choice I like the look.

[red.]

Yeah i've been playing around with it for a couple of hours. it's ok. it speeds up the process of opening my bookmarks menu, selecting my favourite and closing the menu again (i don't like placing bookmarks anywhere and don't like personal bars).

can't do the Ctrl + number thing that the blog says though.

[osirisX]

I really like that idea. Although you could just write your own HTML page with little screenshots and set that as the page that opens when you open a new tab.

[Jexel]

I really like that idea. Although you could just write your own HTML page with little screenshots and set that as the page that opens when you open a new tab.

But it's about making our lives easier not harder :p

Did anybody else apart from me think of RTS when they read "where Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9..."

[Pink Floyd Veteran]

thanks for the explanation Chode, I had no idea what it was.

To answer your question Chode, I am able to do ctrl+number to open the correct page

By the way, is it possible to open Opera with this page as startup page?

[Shasoosh]

opera, the best you can find.

[Fourjays Veteran]

I'll wait til I try it before making final judgement, but from what I've read and can see in the screenshots, this isn't really as amazing as was being made-out. It's not much different from a bookmarks toolbar, or even the bookmarks file menu for that matter. I don't think it would offer much in "speed of use" either (still 1-2 to get to where you want), unless you use keyboard shortcuts all the time.

[Napalm Frog]

thanks for the explanation Chode, I had no idea what it was.

To answer your question Chode, I am able to do ctrl+number to open the correct page

By the way, is it possible to open Opera with this page as startup page?

In the preferences, tell Opera to "Start with a blank page".

[what]

opera, the best you can find.

It won't be long before people make addons so other browsers can have this feature.

[Sethos]

I really wanna use Opera, but when i have a Tab open that isn't done loading and i select another page ... It actually waits til' the last page is loaded and sometimes it even halts the loading! So I'm just stuck, i need to close the tab and open a new one.

[Shasoosh]

It won't be long before people make addons so other browsers can have this feature.

I'm not talking about this simple feature

apparently it does take long to make browsers fast as opera

btw, found something annoying about it, when you open a new link (middle mouse button) until the page loads the tab name is speed dial.

[psyko_x]

I'm not talking about this simple feature

apparently it does take long to make browsers fast as opera

btw, found something annoying about it, when you open a new link (middle mouse button) until the page loads the tab name is speed dial.

yea that's listed on their notes as a known bug though

[b mitchell]

It won't be long before people make addons so other browsers can have this feature.

yep, that and it renders pages differently, making ti an afterthought by most web developers.

[ViperSnake]

Neat idea, that may be useful!

p.s. 4chan?!?!?! shoop da woop

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

Actually, that's a pretty neat idea. Hope Firefox gets <an extension | a feature> like this

[Pink Floyd Veteran]

In the preferences, tell Opera to "Start with a blank page".

there is no start with a blank page

how do you do that?

[Shibby]

there is no start with a blank page

how do you do that?

I'm running 9.01

Go to Tools > Preferences > General Tab

it will be in the drop down box next to the label Start Up.

[MiamiGuy]

The favorites thumbnails looks just like the thumbnails show in the Nintendo Wii Opera browser. Pretty cool to see it now for the desktop Opera browser. :)

[Nightwind Hawk]

Kinda reminds me of the voice recognition in Vista.. although this has nothing to do with voice, when you say "mouse grid" you can select different things with numbers :p

[morca007]

Seems like a pretty awesome feature to me!

I'm using the weekly, and it seems to have a higher than normal RAM usage though...

[Harlem39s Finest]

IMO 'bookmarks toolbar' is as good if not better...

[morca007]

Good god, the live reloading of the thumbnails everytime is annoying.

[phot0nic]

I'm not impressed at all. I thought they had something neat up their sleeves. For me (in Firefox, but any tabbed browser can do it), I just middle-click on a site name on my bookmarks toolbar. Same thing, less clicks. I've always liked Firefox more than Opera, but I've always felt that Opera makes a nice solid package (for those who like that), and they usually include some neat features. This though, well, it's just useless to me. Maybe someone will find it useful.

[Chode]

The really cool thing is that it renders the thumbnail dynamically, adding the speed dialled page into the cache. When you do click it, it is already cached and loads near instantly. Hence the "speed" dial :)