(Guide/Review) Quick Dial is a new tab replacement add-on for Firefox

[Karlston]

Quick Dial is a new tab replacement add-on for Firefox

As someone who has been using Firefox for close to two decades, one of my favorite add-ons for the browser was Speed Dial (by Josep Del Rio).

 

It was superseded by Group Speed Dial when Firefox Quantum was released. If for some reason you don't like the extension, Quick Dial is a nice new tab replacement add-on.

Install it, and open a new tab. The extension starts with a blank page with a gray background. This is in my opinion could be the biggest con of Quick Dial for the layman, it needs to point the user how to use it.

 

Right-click anywhere on the screen and select the "New" menu. It has two options: Add bookmark or folder.

 

Select the former and enter a URL of the web page that you wish to add.

 

 

Another way to add a new Quick dial is to right-click the extension's icon on the toolbar and selecting "Add to Quick Dial".

 

 

This option is also available in the Firefox context menu.

 

 

Left-clicking the toolbar button opens a new tab, those are the only things it can do, so I feel the button is somewhat unnecessary.

 

 

Anyway, the new bookmark will be added to the Quick Dial, and the extension generates a thumbnail preview of the site. Sometimes the preview isn't generated. If this is the case, right click on a dial and select refresh. You may also try the "Capture in new tab" option, which makes the extension loads the page in a new tab and when it finishes loading, a thumbnail is generated. It might take a few tries to get this working, I couldn't get it to work correctly with Twitter and Reddit, even though I was logged in to both social networks.

 

There are 2 more options available when you right-click on a dial. Selecting the "Properties" menu item opens a pop-up window that allows you to edit the dial's Title and the URL. Use the browse button to load an image as the thumbnail. The other option in the context menu is Delete, which you can use to remove unwanted dials and folders. Speaking of which, use the Add folder option to create a directory. Use it to store and organize your bookmarks. You can create sub-folders in the parent folders. Bookmarks and Folders can be dragged and rearranged.

 

Let's go back to the context menu. It has a shortcut labeled "Quick Dial Settings", click it to open a pop-up window. It has 3 tabs.

 

 

The Page tab has customization options for the background color, mode, image. The preview pane displays the changes that you make. Modify the number of rows, columns, set the ratio, margins, from the Grid tab. You can set the default tab behavior for opening bookmarks and folders, i.e. to open in the current tab or a new tab. Don't like the icons for the folder and back button? Use your own.

 

 

The Cells tab contains settings for customizing the layout, i.e., the margin size, opacity, border size, radius, and also allows you to change the background color of the margins and borders. The final set of options are for editing the title height, font size, border size, text color and background transparency.

 

Unlike some speed-dial add-ons, Quick Dial does not have any cloud features. It is an open source extension. The add-on hasn't been updated in a while, but the developer is active on the GitHub project page.

 

Though it lacks the advanced features (backup, restore, hotkeys, etc.) of Group Speed-Dial, Quick Dial is a good new tab replacement extension.

 

Landing Page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/quick-dial/

 

 

Source: Quick Dial is a new tab replacement add-on for Firefox (gHacks - Ashwin)