Opera’s Speed Dial functionality being copied to Firefox and others
52 CommentsPublished June 29th, 2007 11:39 AM EDT By Daniel Goldman
The Speed Dial feature in Opera that was released in Opera 9.2 is apparently popular.
First it was a Firefox extension that imitated Opera’s Speed Dial functionality. Then it was an Opera user who created a web-version of Speed Dial containing 12 visual bookmarks. And just yesterday I came across a search engine that allows you to save search results and webpages as thumbnails on their homepage, similar that what Speed Dial does (Update: In the comments some have suggested that this search engine had this before Opera released Speed Dial. Can anyone confirm this?).
Speed Dial, which admittedly took some time to get used to, is now one of my favorite Opera features. I like the quick visual access to my most visited sites. In addition, on some sites, I can quickly glance and check whether the site has been updated. Having said that, I still rely on bookmark buttons in my toolbar.
Opera’s Speed Dial is often imitated but never duplicated. To try the real thing, download Opera.
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Like I always say, if you want to know what is in the next version of Firefox, just get the current version of Opera.
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I like how your screenshot of Speed Dial has Opera 9.1, not 9.2 as one of the webpages.
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Well said Joe!
btw, i’m like you daniel, the first time speed dial felt like a useless feature, but now i’m liking it
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I think Exalead introduced this feature long before Opera.
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IceArdor: Well, he is a beta tester. He probably took that photo a while back when he was still testing it (before 9.2 was released).
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That’s right Gun! Exalead ha this feature on their website long before Opera.
We could say that Opera was the first Software to have it.
By the way, Exalead is french and is my alternative for google.
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@IceArdor: It’s actually an old screenshot from a previous blog post. Was too lazy to make a new one.
@gun, @Maulkin: You guys may be right. I didn’t to research to determine exactly when they added the feature.
@DMXell: That photo from the first weekly build of Opera 9.2 with the new Speed Dial feature. At that time Opera 9.2, obviously, wasn’t out yet.
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Speed Dial is an incredibly useful feature. It’s so simple and now that Opera has done it appears to be such an obvious feature!
Kudos to Opera for coming up with this feature.
And yes, Bad Behaviour sucks.
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Hmm… you know, as ignorant as your post sounds, you could just as easily become Opera Software’s Asa Dotzler.
Sorry but this post is just ****. I can understand the need to “outpace” FF, but just assuming that the search engine copied it, too, is just plain ignorant and slander.
So far you’ve always changed your posts if there was something wrong with them. Please change this one,too.
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Grey, point taken. I’ve updated the post.
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Thanks
Nice to see you’re better than that. Sorry for attacking you personally (with the Asa reference), my apologies.
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Sorry Daniel you got it wrong with your headline;
“Opera’s Speed Dial functionality being copied to Firefox and others”
I think what you’ll find you meant is that
“Opera’s Speed Dial functionality being Innovated and Introduced by Firefox”
right?
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Speed dial is one of those ideas that in advance I thought, “gimmick!”
Didn’t believe it would add anything to the experience and was a bit of a joke to be honest. And then I started using it.
Honestly it is now probably in my top three most used “active” feature (as in requiring something to interact with/do it) after browsing itself.
‘Mouse Gestures’ and ‘Fit to Width allied with Zoom’ (eyes not to good, chair not so comfy unless slumped back from desk in it) are the other two but after initial doubt about it I use Speed Dial all the time now; both at home where I have one set and at work where I have an entirely different set.
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Actually, the heading should be
“Opera’s Speed Dial functionality easily implemented in Firefox with extension”
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@David Naylor: But the original is, imho, still more responsive and more usable than the rip-off
btw., isn’t “Speed Dial” a trademark of Opera? So how can a Firefox extension use the same name? Not that I want the extensions’ name to be changed but the whole trademark thing wouldn’t make much sense otherwise, would it?
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@David Naylor: Even better, the headline should read: “Another Firefox extension adds bloat to existing bloatware to steal copy an Opera feature.”
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@David: Easily implemented? Yeah, just like mouse gestures right? Oh, if you didn’t catch what I meant, I’ll put it into these terms: mouse gestures suck in Firefox, they’re way too unresponsive. So, with that in mind, the speed dial feature in Firefox is the same. It’s not the same thing as Opera’s, I can guarantee that it doesn’t flow as nicely.
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It seems Exalead did have the image bookmarking thing on the front of their page for a fair while.
http://web.archive.org/web/20060527113013/www.exalead.com/search
D
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You’d think Opera would’ve patented all the innovations they’ve dreampt up over the years. Firefox would be nothing without copying Opera.
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Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
This isn’t the fist time, a Firefox extension has been made to imitate an Opera feature and it won’t be the last.
Just be glad that others can enjoy the benefits of Speed Dial.
Although I have to agree that the extension version is an imitation not a substitution.
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About Exalead, I can confirm that they did before that function than in Opera.
But I prefer the real Speed Dial in Opera.
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I confirm it too.
I have the speed dial disabled, but my parents seem to like it.
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Yeah, nice feature, but I think that search site had that similiar looking feature before.
Anyway, the guy that came up with speed dial, mouse gestures and all the other innovations have now left Opera, so it might be Firefox taking the lead now.
But I’m using Opera until that happens
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Unfortunately not, as the extension is a pale imitation
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Imitation is the greatest form of flattery!
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Hi Maulkin
Thought I was the only person who used Exalead. Glad I’m not because its good, and has got better recently with exalead.co.uk.
Personally, still have never used speed-dail. However, set up a machine with Ubuntu this morning, and so used Firefox (the packaged browser) and was suprised by how long it took to load. Double checked by loading Opera – Opera much quicker. So if I ever use seed-dail, it will be on Opera.
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Looks like that feature popped up in Exalead before Oprea’s. Check 14 Jan, 2006. Even at 24 Nov 2004, Exalead first showed its introduction of “adding shortcuts”, though it’s not evident from web.archive.org whether that included speed dial-like images in November.
http://web.archive.org/web/*sa_/http://www.exalead.com
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I was the Opera user that made the speed dial version with 12 sites.
I just made it because I had 2 problems:
1 – The 9 sites of Opera´s speed dial is not suficient for me and others Opera`s users. The screen have space to allow 12 sites, not only 9.
2 – I couldn`t have the speed dial in IE.
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I also thought speeddial was useless, until I started using it. Now I use it all the time.
Great thinking Opera!
But I would appreciate a option to assign more speeddials, like 12 or 16 maybe, I know this doesnt work for Ctrl+(1-9) but I never use those keyboard shortcuts anyway. Just mouse gesture up to create new tab(customized) and select a site.
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All this shows is that Firefox’s extension mechanism works. Mozilla didn’t copy this or even want this, a developer made this out of good faith.
To balance things out a bit, there are heaps of things Firefox 3 will introduce that Opera doesn’t have like bookmark tagging, location bar simplification and malware warnings. I wonder when Opera will copy those.
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OMG! Opera like totally ripped off the search engine.
But seriously, who cares where a feature comes from, if it’s a good idea it should be in all browsers.
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I’m not sure whether exalead had exactly this function for a long time before Opera implemented it, but since I used exalead for the first time some time ago they display screenshots in their search results, so using screenshots is nothing new to them.
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I can also confirm that Exalead had those shortcuts before Opera had Speed Dial.
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I’ve used Exalead since its beta periods last year. It used thumbnails.
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Everytime I try to add extensions to Firefox to make it “feel” like Opera, it gets slower and slower…Opera Functions are NATIVE..that’s the BIG difference
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I was initially skeptical about speed dial, but now I’m really getting used to it. Guess it shows that really we don’t visit hundreds of sites on a daily basis… I’m yet to fill all nine spots at home or work!
No doubt other browsers will use it, then uninformed Firefox fanboys will claim FF had it first
It doesn’t especially matter I suppose, it all makes browsers better.
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@Anders, who ?
@Mike, unfortunately, you are completely right
@Daniel, i sent a comment two days ago here by operamini, if it is prevented by moderation, i have no problem, if not please tell me to report a bug (after retrying it ofcourse)
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Well I am a Omniweb user on OS X and very old timer user of Opera. Both browsers share same fate as being copied and both browsers really deserve a little, tiny “thanks” note at least.
Community really should learn to thank before developers do. For example, they “Hate” AOL. They could continue to hate of course but they should thank AOL about donating MILLIONS of dollars to Mozilla foundation and giving them their own developers for ages. Look to those massive bugs fixed by netscape.com e-mail having people (near all changed mails).
Speed dial is Opera innovation and Opera ASA should be acknowledged for it. RMS and friends didn’t start open source/free software philosophy for this attitude.
I’d say to Opera what I keep saying to Omni Group, they should protect their innovations by patenting them but that time, trolls would attack…
Well, if MS copies it too, you know what to do
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Sorry for double comment but I think Opera and other small browser developers expect a “implementation of Opera’s Speed Dial” from developer himself.
For example, some KDE based software got the idea from Quicksilver/OS X (blacktree), shipped it adding couple of other functions usable for Linux users and author politely says “Idea is from Quicksilver/OS X”.
Open/Free or not, credits should be given for sake of politeness and ethics, not like Opera has army of lawyers like some other company nor they managed to make a complete legend like Debian change the browsers name just because couple of patches if you know what I mean.
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milking the fat cow ?
IMHO, patenting ideas is the worst thing any company can do, think about if knife, wheel, glass are patented by their inventors, imagine your life if thinking is patented by the first man on earth (yes, just humans can patent, no other beeing is evel enough to control others).
another credit go to Opera, Opera always keep the competetion honest.
actually, it is not because any pach.
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I have been wondering this myself, and posted as much here: http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=195370
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problem with firefox extension and opera is simple – opera invented it [or implemented it first, to be exact, in software] but firefox guys copied it and [here is important part] IMPROVED it
lots of usefull opera inventions were copied by firefox, but they werent just copied, they were copied and IMPROVED.
opera is good at creating stuff, but it is very bad at following trough.
tabbing? opera has its implementation, but aside from MDI/SDI fuss [that i dont care at all] firefox extensions like tab mix plus, bring tabbing to a whole new level. how many more years opera users are going to have unconfigurable middle-mouse-button? how long does it take to add an option ‘close tab and go to the right’? option that was requested probably in previous century, when dinosaurs were roaming the streets..
there are lots of similar stuff – download manager [lots of usefull extensions to fix it], webdevelopment tools [none in opera, dont point me to that sh.. at dev.opera.com], ad blocking [it works, but why it wasnt improved at all from the begining?], why there is no auto-fill? why email client is so completly underdeveloped? it was nice and innovative in 7.x era. now every free mail-agent outthere is more powerfull, not counting advanced webmails [that dont work with opera, another stuff to fix - either by a**licking webmail's developers or fixing operas bugs - because there are lots of them, no matter how standard compliant opera is]
so to sum it up – yes, firefox extension is now a mere rip-off, but i bet, that in month time it will surpas opera’ one in functionality, it is going to improve, while opera’ still be exactly the same in version 12.2 as it is now in 9.2.
and thats why opera is never going to beat firefox. it might has it all out of the box – but most of that stuff is prety outdated. extensions are always fresh.
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Stop slagging off Firefox. Opera is slow to load, bloated and not very user friendly. the mobile edition is slow and annoying, it DOESN’T WORK!
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nice note from ie user
but please, can you teach us from your valuable experience, (assumed Opera isn’t the fastest browser ever), if Opera is bloated what piece of software isn’t ? (excluding minesweeper).
which other mobile browser is faster, i didn’t tried it myself, but all whom i know think it is the fastest browser and most usable for mobiles, no offence, i am just curious about your opinion.
for mobile browsers try Opera mini, it can be installed on almost any phone (of course including yours which have opera mobile), it shrink the web (rather than the legacy wap) for you, so large pages would be trons formed to few kilo bytes before you got them.
check point 6 here
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Hope that Speed dial would land on Opera Mobile & Mini. It seems to be a very useful and logical feature for the mobile phone web browsers.
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Well, well. Didn’t take long for the Firefox fangirls to show up with their spindoctoring, did it?
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Md Hasli, Opera Mini actually has some form of Speed Dial, though without the thumbnails. Your top 9 Opera Mini bookmarks can be quickly accessed through CTRL+1 through CTRL+9.
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Hasli, as Daniel mentioned, Opera mini has speed dial as fast bookmark shortcuts, actually it acquires its name from mobile spead dial feature (for phone numbers), then opera desktop aquired the same name from opera mini.
“Your top 9 Opera Mini bookmarks can be quickly accessed through CTRL+1 through CTRL+9.”
Daniel, too sade my phone doesn’t have “CTRL” key
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khaled, my bad. I meant ‘# + 1′ through ‘# + 9′.
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It’s true that speed dial refers to the good old phone speed dial… obviously
However, the desktop version didn’t aquire it from Opera Mini, since I designed it for both Mini and Desktop together, and that was part of the thinking behind it, that it should work as sweet as possible on all platforms and be easy to grasp.
It was one of the last thing I designed before leaving, but the desktop version took longer to implement so it came out later.
The last part of design is still missing though, the ability to sync between all those platforms, but I guess they’re working on it
.
Cheers,
Trond.
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@Daniel, i am sorry this comment will be off topic, please forgive me this time
@Trond, i just knew you now (after search), unfortunately that’s too late, but i really want to say my “thank you” for the greatest UI i ever met, (and believe me i tried many programs using different toolkits over many DEs over some OSs) Opera’s UI is the most friendly customizable, advanced, lightweight UI i know, beside it is OS independent.
congratulation Trond, you perfectly did your job, if you turned back to software development i wish to hear your news
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Khaled,
Thanks, but I agree, this is getting off topic so let’s stop here
Anyway, as a last comment, while my heart is mostly into making music now, I do lead the creation of a new music service called Ezmo, but it’s very beta still.
I added a post about it at my unused blog, so move any replies regarding it over there.
Trond