A new release of Opera is inching closer, and right now early adopters can get their hands on the official Opera 9.2 Beta. This version actually contains a compilation of features that I have mentioned as they were in development:
- Opera Speed Dial (pictured below) that makes it easy to keep track of your favorite sites.
- New developer tools.
- Anonymous usage of the browser is now being collected, but it can be turned off.
- By default the Start Bar is disabled. This was the toolbar that would pop down when you would click in the Address Bar, and typically contained a shortcut to your homepage as well as your bookmarks.
- …and even more
I like when Opera throws nice new features into minor releases like this. Speed Dial is something no other browser has, and with it you can keep tabs (no pun intended) on websites you frequently visit. I can’t wait to hear what Opera 10 is going to bring!
Download Opera 9.2 Beta
Source: Opera Watch
Here is what Opera’s Speed Dial looks like:
Hmm interesting… I just wondering is there any Firefox extension that could do something like this?
There are Firefox extensions that display your open tabs in a similar fashion. One example is the [addons.mozilla.org] extension.
But I’ve yet to see an extension where you can store your favorite sites, like Opera’s speed dial.
Yeah, Opera’s speed dial is really unique. Someone was definitely thinking outside the box when they came up with it.
When they first released it I was a little disappointed because it would refresh ALL of the pages in your speed dial every time it opened up. That means every time you created a new tab it would load all of the sites…which is very bad as you can imagine. They have since fixed that and it only reloads it periodically or when you manually refresh it. I haven’t quite figured out their algorithm for determining whether they should reload the speed dial. I’m guessing it is just a timer.
hi When they first released it I was a little disappointed because it would refresh ALL of the pages in your speed dial every time it opened up.
there is an extension for firefox that let you jump from link to link (and i think also to operate the browser) with just the keypad numbers. it display a number near each link, and u just type it in to surf there.
but i forgot the name, and i don’t recall if it had something like that speed dial.
Jack of all Trades: You are perhaps talking about [rudolf-noe.de] or [hah.mozdev.org]
exactly
good call.
I’m sure if someone needed something to speed dial in Firefox that they could find an extension to suit their needs. I like that Opera keeps adding great features though, because to do many of the things that Opera does in Firefox you would need many extensions. And even though the extensions are available you would definitely want to try and keep them to just a handful because many extensions force memory leaks in Firefox for some reason.