Honestly, I was beginning to lose faith in Firefox’s recommended extensions. I mean, StumbleUpon and Cooliris were really cool… for, like, five minutes. But then they just got boring and annoying (respectively). However, this Firefox add-on is the reason that I haven’t gone to sleep yet tonight. It is elegant in its simplicity; I get to browse all of my favorite websites at the same time and I don’t have to rummage through my carefully-filed Bookmarks folder to do it!
I recognize that I am a nerd (and, incidentally, embracing the truth really does set you free). That being said, I like to read webcomics and blags. However, such entertaining distractions are, at best, sporadic in their updates. Before I discovered this puppy, my daily inter-web routine consisted of the following: I would go to my Bookmarks menu, wait for it to expand, then move my mouse onto my Webcomics folder, then wait for it to expand (it is crucial to realize here that blag-o-sphere patience is inversely proportionate to ones level of nerdiness). Then I would be faced with two, equally-distasteful options: I could either click on each link separately and wait for it to load in order to see if there was anything new waiting for me, or I could choose to “Open All in Tabs” and go make myself a sandwich while the dozen-or-so pages load (returning to find that only one of those pages held any new content).
NO MORE!!! Now, when I open Firefox, my usual three tabs appear (gMail, Facebook, and Quark, if you must know), accompanied by their newest sibling: the Blag-o-Tag (copyright pending on that title). Now, all of the pages that hold my preferred entertainment are shown on one screen! From the Blag-a-Tag-Tag (still working out the kinks), I can quickly scan my favorites and pick the ones that hold new treasures for me! And the best part? It only takes ten seconds. TOPS! And only one mouse-click involved.
In short, as Sotm would put it, Fast Dial has made me a more efficient time-waster. I’m going to show you some screenshots before I break into song:
That’s what mine looks like now. If you like bigger thumbnails (or have fewer pages to check up on) you can adjust the number (and, therefore, size) of thumbnails. Oh man, I’m still geeking out over it…
