They can be used to display information in real time on that age, from news to stock market information and weather reports.

There are currently 47 different speed dial extensions available on the Opera Addons page. This includes only English addons, additional addons are available for other languages.

I looked through all available extensions and have compiled a list of extensions that I consider to be the most useful. Obviously, you may have different requirements and expectations. I suggest you look at the extension listing after reading this article to see if there are other extensions that you might want to install.

• Stocktwits: Display trending stocks based on social chatter.
• Speed dial countdown: Add a timer to Opera which you can use as a reminder for instance.
• Analog Clock: Displays a basic analog clock on the speed dial page.
• The Weather: Displays a weather report for a location of your choosing.

• Photo Tagger: Tag photos on the Internet. Those appear then on the speed dial page. You can open the images at anytime once they are tagged.
• Live News Feed: Display the latest news of your favorite website on the speed dial page.
• Webcam Viewer: Display a web cam feed on the new tab page.
• Calendar: Display a calendar on the speed dial page.

• Currency Dial: Display currency conversion rates on the speed dial page. You can select two currencies in the preferences.
• Stay Secure: Select programs and software that you want to be informed about security vulnerabilities.
• Flickr Photostream: Display photos of a Flickr user on the new tab page.
• IcoLog: Display favicons of visited websites.

Those have been twelve interesting speed dial addons for the Opera 11.50 web browser. With the final release of the browser, it is likely that the count will go up considerably. Have you tried Opera 11.50 yet? If so, what is your impression of the new version?

Manual installation was a breeze. Users should check the Options during installation as it allows them to install a portable copy of Opera if they like.

The What’s New in Opera 11.10 page is automatically loaded after upgrade or manual installation. Among the new features is an improved version of Speed Dial which the company calls Speed Dial 2.0. They have basically done away with most of the restrictions of the former Speed Dial. You can for instance add an unlimited number of websites to the Speed Dial page, and the previews are dynamically updated to reflect website changes.

Opera 11.10 will also make it easier to install missing browser plugins. For now, it is only Adobe Flash Player that is supported but more will surely follow in later releases. If you do not have Flash installed in Opera you get a prompt when you visit a site that requires Flash. Installation is seamless and automatic with barely any user interaction.

Improvements have been made to Opera Turbo, Opera’s own compression engine that compresses requested on an Opera server before they are send to the user. This can greatly reduce the period it takes to download and display the full web page on the user’s screen.

Web Developers will notice that Opera has added support for new CSS3 elements like linear gradients and multiple columns. The HTML5test reflects this with a slightly better score of 265 out of 400 points (the beta was at 251 points, Opera 11.01 at 241 points).

Opera Speed Dial Video

Opera Turbo Video

Interested users find the latest Opera 11.10 downloads over at the Opera website. You can also take a look at the changelog for in depths information on all changes in this new release.

In other news; Opera is now offering a web email service that’s free for anyone to use. It is called My Opera Mail.

Speed Dial basically displays a thumbnail list of the user’s favorite websites on the new tab page. This improves the usability and accessibility as it is now possible to open those websites with a single click on the new tab page.

The new and improved speed dial is “more fluid, dynamic and easier to use” says software developer Cezary Kułakowski in a blog post over at the Opera Desktop Team blog.

What does he mean by that? Probably the biggest difference is that website thumbnails are now placed dynamically on the new tab page, they adjust their size and position automatically based on the open Opera window and user preferences.

Opera has also done away with the hard coded website limit which means that it is now possible to display more websites on the new tab page. A scroll bar is automatically added when the size of the website thumbnails exceeds the available window space.

New websites are added to Speed Dial with a click on the plus icon on the last website thumbnail on the Opera Speed Dial page.

Users can add websites that they visit frequently (top ten) or open websites. An option to add sites from the bookmarks would have been handy.

Users can furthermore configure Opera Speed Dial by right-clicking on the page and selecting Configure Speed Dial or Appearance.

The Configure Speed Dial menu offers options to hide speed dial, change the background image to a custom one from the local computer and select the way the thumbnails are displayed on the page.

The new Opera Speed Dial will be integrated into the upcoming Opera 11.10 and future versions of the web browser. Interested users can download the latest snapshot of Opera 11.10 from the Opera Desktop Team blog posting. They should check the known issues first before they update existing versions of Opera. It is however possible to install the snapshot build in a different location. The snapshot of the browser is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Speed Dial is displaying nine website thumbnails in a 3×3 matrix. Some users of the Opera Internet browser might want to change the speed dial size to display additional (or less) website thumbnails. This can be done by editing the speeddial.ini configuration file that is found in the Opera profile folder. Windows users find the file in the Application Data folder.

All that needs to be done to change the speed dial size is to open the speeddial.ini file and add the following three lines to the end of the file.

[Size]
Rows=x
Columns=y

where x and y are the number of rows and columns that should be displayed.

4×4

8×8

Some sizes are obviously to large to offer the benefit that Speed Dial is supposed to offer to the Internet user. It might however still be interesting for some users who want to increase the speed dial size slightly.

The thumbnails that are used to represent the websites in the Speed Dial form are taken directly from the website. The best way of identifying the website is probably the title of the website which will be displayed below each thumbnail. The thumbnail itself is usually to small to be helpful in quickly identifying the website.

Tamil who runs a blog at the Opera website posted information on how to exchange the automatically generated thumbnails with custom ones that make it easier to identify the websites. The alternative thumbnails have to be created in png format with a suggest size of 256×192 pixels or less.

The default thumbnails are stored in the Opera profile folder. Windows users can locate that folder at Documents and Settings\[USERNAME]\Application Data\Opera\Opera\profile\thumbnails. The available thumbnails are randomly named. The only way of identifying the websites is to open them in an image viewer. All that needs to be done to exchange the thumbnails is to copy the name of the default thumbnail and name the new thumbnail identically. Once that is done the thumbnails can be exchanged. It should be noted that Opera has to be closed during the file operation.

Two thumbnails have been exchanged in the above example. This makes it easier to identify websites in Speed Dial. It is easy to undo the changes. Pressing F5 will automatically generate new thumbnails of the website replacing the existing ones.

The advantage of Opera Link is that it is build into Opera like many other features that can only be added to Firefox with add-ons. Opera Link can be used to synchronize Bookmarks, Notes, Speed Dial and the Personal Bar with an online storage at Opera. That storage can be accessed by other Opera browsers including Opera Mini. As a bonus the personal data can also be accessed directly on the Opera website which is excellent if you access the web from a computer that has no Opera browser installed.

Using Opera Link could not be easier. The feature can be accessed in the File > Synchronize Opera menu and requires an account at Opera. The account can be created right from the menu and the only data that is required is a username, password and email.

The transfer of the data is fast and I was not able to witness any delay in the process. The data will be continuously synced with Opera Link until the user decides to turn that feature off again.

Bookmarks and the other data will be synchronized with every browser that activates the sync feature and provides the same user data that has been entered during account creation.

The online version provides access to the bookmarks and Speed Dial links and even has an option to add new bookmarks.

The exact same feature is now available as a Firefox extension Speed Dial. Websites can be assigned to the nine spots by using the “Set as Speed Dial” entry in the Bookmarks menu. This is slightly more uncomfortable than in Opera where it is possible to click one of the nine spots and select an entry from the bookmarks.

The website has to be loaded first to be able to add it to one of the Speed Dial spots. Several options can be configured including where the Speed Dial bookmarks shall be shown. A website shown there can be loaded by clicking on it, pressing the number or by pressing CTRL + the number from any open tab.

I personally don’t think that this is an ultimate feature but it could be nice to have for some users especially those who use the feature in Opera and want to use it in Firefox as well. I will stick to my bookmarks toolbar for now which is just a bit faster in my opinion.