bookmarks vs Speed dial
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I'm a long time Firefox user, and have now definitely switched over to using Vivaldi.
in my experience it is definitely slower loading pages, but all the other benefits ( tab management, page tiling etc, ) outweigh this.My question: apart from the visual aspect, ie the thumbnails, I don't really see much difference between using regular bookmarks and using speed dial.
I usually have a few folders with meaningful names on my bookmark bar in which I either add or execute a bookmark.
I already know what these sites looks like so I don't necessarily need a thumbnail of this.
Am I missing some smart features using speed dial? -
@esmeral - Speed Dial is just a specialized UI for whatever bookmark folder you select for it to display. No, I don't imagine you are missing some smart features for it, as no really smart features have been introduced to it yet. Some people (my wife for instance) just prefer the Speed Dial interface for heavily-used bookmarks, so there it is. More features will be introduced for it in the future.
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@esmeral
If you setvivaldi:startpage
(speed dial) as your home page it is quite efficient.
Your most frequently used sites are right there whenever you open a new tab or press the home button thereby saving space.
You can also organize your bookmarks and view/delete history from the speed dial page.
I also like the ability to set any picture as the speed dial background. -
Eveything CantankRus says is correct. Each person's work habits and UI needs and preferences are different.
For instance, I rarely if ever use History for anything, and I prefer to edit and organize my bookmarks from the Bookmark Panel rather than the Bookmark Tab/Manager. So when it comes to the Speed Dial page, I don't even think of these things. However, I do have both New Tab and Home Page directed to StartPage/Speed Dial, because it is efficient to have my preferred links right there staring at me when I open a new tab, as the reason for opening that tab is almost always because I want to go to one of the destinations in Speed Dial.
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@esmeral said in bookmarks vs Speed dial:
My question: apart from the visual aspect, ie the thumbnails, I don't really see much difference between using regular bookmarks and using speed dial.
The clue is in the name. It's faster than using bookmarks, and you don't need to waste precious vertical space with the bookmarks bar always being open. The only other way that may be faster for keyboard users is to type a nickname in the URL field and press enter. I use that method for checking my local bus arrivals.
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@Pesala said in bookmarks vs Speed dial:
The clue is in the name. It's faster than using bookmarks, and you don't need to waste precious vertical space with the bookmarks bar always being open. The only other way that may be faster for keyboard users is to type a nickname in the URL field and press enter. I use that method for checking my local bus arrivals.
Unfortunately for me, there's still no easy way to efficiently navigate a categorized bookmark tree with 2500+ bookmarks. Speed Dials definitely don't cut it.
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- For you very frequently used bookmarks (only 15 fit on my speed dial, but some users have a couple of folders for different categories: work, enternatinment, hobbies, etc.) use speed dials
- For frequently used bookmarks use the bookmarks bar
- For less frequently used bookmarks use nicknames
- For infrequently used bookmarks, use the search field in the bookmarks panel.
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Thanks, but I'm still holding out for a Bookmarks menu on the macOS menu bar!
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thank you for all the feedback, I think I'll mainly be using bookmarks, but I'm definitely going to try out speed dial, see if I can find any meaningful uses for my situation.
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Speed Dial would become incredibly useful if there could be an option to turn off the thumbnails and have just the plain text labels listed in tightly packed columns and rows. You could then have hundreds of bookmarks visible on screen all at once, without having to dive into folders or do a lot of scrolling up and down.
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@dLeon
Yes! That's pretty much a perfect example of exactly what I was talking about. Thanks for the link.I've done something similar for years in other browsers just using a manually edited local HTML file full of links and setting it up as my home page. It works great but having to edit the HTML file every time I want to make a change is not very convenient.
Having options so Speed Dial could be set up that way, rather than relying on a plugin or HTML file, would be the most desirable way though.
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@dLeon said in bookmarks vs Speed dial:
@Blueridge
There's Chrome extension that mimic what you ask. Although not in column/row, at least not by default.
Humble New Tab PageSuper configurable. We can stylesheet it. Maybe we can column/row it.
Thanks @dLeon,
Until the speed dial becomes more configurable I may use this.
I was able to set a Bookmarks, speed dial and Settings column.
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One of the original points of speed dial when Opera invented it - indeed, the very reason it is CALLED speed-dial - is that it was literally the same as a phone speed-dial pad... it was a 3x3 matrix and you could use the corresponding numbers to open the pages.
In that respect, it really was speedy: CTRL-N, CTRL-1 (on the numpad) and you opened your "bottom-left" speedial page.
Personally, I still use it in that way - I only ever have between six and ten pages in speed dial (arranged logically) and they really are my daily go-to pages. Open a new tab, click, and there's my news. Click one of the others to open my work administration pages, and so on. Anything I might check every couple of weeks or months belongs in the bookmarks instead.
What I don't understand is why Opera then abandoned the minimalist speed dial and let "power users" (i.e. people who get turned on by having 1000 tabs open at once) put hundreds of links in a scrollable "speed dial". That completely defeats the purpose in my opinion - it turns it into a badly disorganised system of bookmarks - so it's not a good speed dial and it's not good bookmarking...
... mind you; this was around the time they killed real Opera and completely removed bookmarks, so looking back it shouldn't surprise me that the idiots running the show then would think like that.