As the Internet grows to be the main source of news, we seek easier access to it in the least time possible. What would you say if I told you that there is a Firefox extension that gives you fast access to your most visited websites using a single tab that displays the webpages as small thumbnails? I’m talking about Speed Dial, a free Firefox extension created by Josep del Rio that gives you direct access within one tab to all your daily visited websites.

After its installation, Speed Dial adds two small buttons on your Firefox toolbar customization panel that you can add to your browser interface using the drag & drop functionality. The Speed Dial button allows you to open Speed Dial if you click on it or displays a drop-down list containing the websites you have currently assigned. The Set as Speed Dial button gives you a fast way to add the current webpage to your Speed Dial entry.

The Speed Dial extension offers you four other methods to assign websites.

The first refers to your Bookmark menu because it adds the Set as Speed Dial sub-menu and after clicking on it, you have to choose the slot where you want the website to be assigned. The second method requires you to open a new tab or window, access the Speed Dial tab, and click on an unassigned thumbnail and the Add Dial panel appears. Type the address to the Location bar, create a custom title and change the refresh rate in order to meet your needs. This won’t work for the slots that have already been assigned, so in order to reassign them with a different website, you have to choose Edit from the right-click menu.

This extension adds the Set as Speed Dial item on your new content and new tab context menus. Unlike the first two methods, the last ones are not available by default but it’s easy to activate them by using the extension options panel. As you can see, Speed Dial comes in your aid by offering you many ways to access and use it. But that’s not all it can do. It’s a highly configurable extension taking into consideration the number of available options on the settings panel.

Speed Dial offers an extensive list of options and features for you to play with, so I will make a brief presentation of the major ones.

The settings panel contains four major tabs with self-explanatory names such as:  Main, Thumbnails, Controls and Advanced.

The Main tab allows you to customize your layout by entering the number or rows and columns you want. These Speed Dial slots can be accessed using a keyboard shortcut based on the Ctrl key and a number from 1 to 9. There is no problem in case you have more than nine favorite websites because Speed Dial automatically activates a special feature named the Multikey that displays a styled screen overlay after the first number is introduced. So, with Multikey, there is no limit to the number of possible assigned slots.

The Thumbnails tab lets you manage thumbnail buttons from the context menu by removing or adding new ones with a single click. Through the thumbnail size options you can scale the browser to match the width of the newly generated thumbnail. The thumbnails can be reordered using the simple drag & drop functionality, so you don’t have to delete the currently assigned websites in order to change their order. Speed Dial contains an automatic refresh rate that can be customized as well, but it can be done instantly using the background browser menu. As mentioned, you can create customized headlines for each thumbnail; unfortunately, it does not allow you to change the font sizes.

In case you want to customize the default keyboard shortcuts and mouse click options or disable/enable the Multikey feature, click on the Controls tab and start personalizing your Speed Dial extension.

The Advanced tab gives you access to the background browser size feature that customizes the width and weight of the hidden browser that is used when the Speed Dial slots are refreshed. In case you are not happy with the default value (800 pixels), change it in order to provide a better balance between layout accuracy and readability. Keep in mind that no matter the change, the effect will be seen after creating or refreshing a thumbnail.

The Good

Speed Dial enables you to easily navigate multiple websites using the thumbnails and keyboard shortcuts specially assigned. The Multikey feature is awesome because it allows anyone to create unlimited numbers of slots.

The Bad

There isn’t much to say here because there were no problems with Speed Dial whatsoever, but some visual effects would make this extension look even better. Speed Dial’s goal is to offer an easy way to access your most visited websites and that’s why I think a predefined list with the most important ones should be integrated within Speed Dial.

The Truth

If you visit the same websites on a daily basis, then Speed Dial is definitely worth a try. It will take some time to get used to it, but you won’t be disappointed.  

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: