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.