Mozilla launches Firefox 4

seekermeister said:

I've never been a fan of Firefox, but I must say that I like it better now, than what I had seen in the past. I haven't actually worked with it yet, other than setting it up, so I'm uncertain how my opinion will stand up. One thing that they need to add is Speed Dial.

Speed Dial for Firefox is extremely powerful compared to anything I have seen while testing Opera/Chrome.

It is so configurable that I actually use FF Speed Dial to keep tabs on several web pages, like posts in this forum. I have a tab (it has tabbed pages of speed dials) devoted to forums like this one. Then you can zoom and crop to actually make the text you are intrested in readable from the speed dial. So I can just look at the speed dial and see if there is a new posting in any topics I am involved in.

I also have readable speed dials in FF set up with weather/tv guide/TV torrents/email/news headlines.

Snowdog,

Thanks for the link, but I installed it and left the options at default, but after FF restarted, I don't see hide nor hair of Speed Dial. How is it accessed?

Wallonn7,

Thanks, that helped. I have used FF so little, that I'm somewhat lost on it. While I understand that one can create multiple Speed Dial pages, is it possible to configure one with more than 9 windows, or use custom graphics for a website thumbnail, rather than what is loaded in automatically?

seekermeister said:

Snowdog,

Thanks for the link, but I installed it and left the options at default, but after FF restarted, I don't see hide nor hair of Speed Dial. How is it accessed?

I don't remember having any issues starting using it from the beginning, but I have been using for a long time. It is possible that by default it will open in empty windows/tabs, but if you have something else (your homepage) set to open in empty windows, you will get that instead since it won't be empty.

I also have my homepage set to:
chrome://speeddial/content/speeddial.xul

Here is the general options set for Speed Dial.

seekermeister said:

Wallonn7,

Thanks, that helped. I have used FF so little, that I'm somewhat lost on it. While I understand that one can create multiple Speed Dial pages, is it possible to configure one with more than 9 windows, or use custom graphics for a website thumbnail, rather than what is loaded in automatically?

Yes any number. I just did a test with 6 x 8 = 48 dials on one tab. I don't know where the limit is. I prefer big and readable(attached) so I use 8 per tab to make a bunch of mini web pages.

But there is also a "make image from" option for a static image as well.

Basically it is Speed Dial on steroids. After using this, I consider the Opera speed dial nearly unusable.

Snowdog said:

seekermeister said:

Wallonn7,

Thanks, that helped. I have used FF so little, that I'm somewhat lost on it. While I understand that one can create multiple Speed Dial pages, is it possible to configure one with more than 9 windows, or use custom graphics for a website thumbnail, rather than what is loaded in automatically?

Yes any number. I just did a test with 6 x 8 = 48 dials on one tab. I don't know where the limit is. I prefer big and readable(attached) so I use 8 per tab to make a bunch of mini web pages.

But there is also a "make image from" option for a static image as well.

Basically it is Speed Dial on steroids. After using this, I consider the Opera speed dial nearly unusable.

That's good, but can you give me a scent to follow, or must I simply follow my nose without a whisp to go by. I understand your preference for large thumbnail windows, but by using custom graphics, it is easy to select one when it is much, much smaller. On Opera, I have ~ 68 gathered together, and could add many more if needed. I really don't care for the idea of multiple tabs for them.

EDIT: I found the control for adding thumbnail windows, although it appears that all that I could add was a total of 60 (6x10). I tried setting it for 6x12 and it didn't change. That would be sufficient, but I still need to have the control for using custom graphics.

FF4 is definitely faster than 3.