fast dial in Firefox - how good is it?

Hello,

I just wanted to let you all know that if you haven't tried Firefox yet, a good excuse is the new Firefox 3 which has only been out a few days. What is Firefox? It is an internet browser. A lot of people use Internet Explorer. Firefox is a strong alternative. One great thing about Firefox (which admittedly was good even prior to version 3), is an add-on called 'fast dial'. It creates a series of default icons on your new tab (which is normally just blank) which are url links to your favourite sites. The image displayed on each icon is normally a screen-capture of your favourite site's introductory page. You can also choose to use locally stored gif, jpeg, png files etc as your icon's emblem. That's the way I decided to go. In any case, my start-up and 'new tab' screen now look like this and I reckon it's really good and just thought I'd let you all know. Here is a screen shot:


For all you 'Opera' people out there - I know, ok?! :) To all you non-'Opera' people, 'Opera' is a very fast internet browser that does not slow your system down much at all like Internet Explorer and Firefox 2 tend to do. Opera came up with this icon grid url launching idea integrated in to their browser. It is called Speed Dial in Opera. One limitation of 'Speed Dial' is it mandates only 9 icons rather than a customised grid of how ever many you desire like the 'Fast Dial' that Firefox allows for. Opera is worth checking out if you have a slower system or if you just like a simpler approach to browsing. Firefox suits people who like to customise their browser. Internet Explorer is kind of playing catch up with both these lean machines.

One criticism of Fast Dial is that it does not appear to be compatible with IE tab in Firefox. Sometimes you want to use Internet Explorer but you may not wish to open another window. IE tab (another add-on for Firefox) allows you to open an Internet Explorer page as a tab in Firefox. Fast Dial does not allow you to right click an icon and select 'Open in IE tab' which you can otherwise do on any other link you come across in Firefox. Mildly annoying, but hey, it's free software and is otherwise awesome. Who am I to complain??