Increasing Opera's Speed Dial
One of the beauties of Opera is it's Speed Dial feature … a "page" containing nine slots in which you can specify websites to open at the click of the mouse. The problem, though, is that this feature (which I initially thought was silly, but grew to love) gets full pretty quickly, so nine slots does not quite do it. Especially if you have a large monitor.
(Yes, I know: Firefox now has its own version of SpeedDial.)
Any way, Remco Lanting at My.Opera.com has posted a quick method of increasing Opera's speed dial slots:
Close Opera
Edit speeddial.ini in your profile to add this:[Size]
Rows=4
Columns=5
What I had to do to be able to edit the speeddial.ini though, was not so easy. After closing Opera and locating speeddial.ini in my profile, I couldn't edit it in NoteTab Pro … even after I dragged it to my desktop. I finally edited it in NotePad, dragged it back, and had 20(!) Speed Dial slots available. And, as always, you can drag items to other slots.
Cheap thrills, eh? :)
Kudos to Mr. Lanting.
21 Comments to "Increasing Opera's Speed Dial"
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Dave Child says:
Comment posted on 07/14/08 @ 6:39 am
Great tip, Diane – been wanting more slots there for ages!
Diane Vigil says:
Comment posted on 07/14/08 @ 6:41 am
Dave, it's you!! <grin>
You're very welcome, although I can't take credit for the solution.
Hope you and yours are doing well!
Diane Vigil says:
Comment posted on 07/14/08 @ 6:54 am
I just realized you'd moved to a new domain — addedbytes.com — and so I've updated all my links to go to the proper pages.
Janet says:
Comment posted on 09/28/08 @ 3:23 am
Thx for the tip. Can I do this in Firefox?
Diane Vigil says:
Comment posted on 09/28/08 @ 3:40 am
Sure. Take a look at Firefox add-ons. There are a few speeddial-like addons.
Janet says:
Comment posted on 10/5/08 @ 6:22 pm
I got this Fast Dial 2.11 Add-on for Firefox from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5721
Are there any better recommendations?
Diane Vigil says:
Comment posted on 10/5/08 @ 6:25 pm
Not sure. You can check whatever addons are available for Firefox.
Janet says:
Comment posted on 10/5/08 @ 6:33 pm
Looks like you don't use Firefox :)
Diane Vigil says:
Comment posted on 10/5/08 @ 6:35 pm
I only use Firefox on occasion, when necessary and to test the websites we build, which is why I had originally posted about Opera (which I use all the time).
Janet says:
Comment posted on 10/5/08 @ 6:43 pm
Ahan. I do that on Opera currently. I'm not much satisfied with FF3 and thinking to move to Opera or Chrome as my default browser. Good thing Opera have Speed Dial by default.
Diane Vigil says:
Comment posted on 10/5/08 @ 6:49 pm
Okay. I just happen to like some of Opera's features and its overall functionality. And, if I could say so, elegance, both in functionality and visually (depending, of course, on what theme/skin you use and how you arrange the toolbars and what appears on the toolbars).
For instance, I prefer browser tabs to be at the bottom of the browser window, which mirrors what other programs usually do on Windows.
But that's just my choice.
vanya says:
Comment posted on 10/21/08 @ 9:17 am
What's a profile? Can someone give that instruction in steps?
Diane Vigil says:
Comment posted on 10/21/08 @ 10:32 am
Vanya, I guess I didn't explain that well. The speeddial.ini file is likely contained in a folder called "profile". If you've got Opera installed, look through the related folders.
On Windows, the file might be in:
C:\program files\username\Opera\ … etc
or in:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Opera\Opera9.52\profile
pan says:
Comment posted on 05/12/09 @ 12:02 am
Close Opera
Edit speeddial.ini in your profile to add this:
[Size]
Rows=4
Columns=5
there is no speedial.ini file. it is called speeddial_default. I edited it with opera closed but it didn't work.
Diane Vigil says:
Comment posted on 05/12/09 @ 1:18 am
Pan, did you look in Program Files and in the Application data? The file paths (directories) are in the post above yours (#13) … yours may be slightly different. What version of Opera are you using?
Pan says:
Comment posted on 05/12/09 @ 1:37 am
this is the path. I am using opera 9.6 the latest.
C:\Program Files\Opera\defaults
the file was called speedial_default.ini
I believe it is the correct file. But it didn't work when i edited it
Pan says:
Comment posted on 05/12/09 @ 1:39 am
is this how it should look like?
Opera Preferences version 2.1
; Do not edit this file while Opera is running
; This file is stored in UTF-8 encoding
[Speed Dial 1]
Title=http://redir.opera.com/speeddials/?id=1
Url=http://redir.opera.com/speeddials/?id=1
Reload Enabled=0
Reload Interval=0
Reload Only If Expired=0
[Size]
Rows=4
Columns=4
Diane Vigil says:
Comment posted on 05/12/09 @ 1:42 am
I see. I have that file too, but it's not the file I edited. I am thinking that you need to look in your profile folder, not at the defaults. If you're running Windows, look somewhere like this:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Opera\profile
Diane Vigil says:
Comment posted on 05/12/09 @ 1:48 am
Oops. I see that you replied while I was still typing.
Save a copy of the file first, and then edit the Rows and Columns. I have this, which gives me 20 speed dial slots:
[Size]
Rows=4
Columns=5
Pan says:
Comment posted on 05/12/09 @ 3:12 am
Diane
thank's a lot. I managed to do it
Diane Vigil says:
Comment posted on 05/12/09 @ 3:14 am
Excellent. Enjoy!