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>> To me it seems strange to just keep three pages
>> open and reuse them, rather than opening blank tabs.
That's not quite what I meant - I rarely ever have LESS than three open. I tend to middle click to open links in new tabs, or open my more commonly used sites from the favicons dragged to my toolbar with ctrl-shift-click, again opening new tabs that way. (I WISH it let you middle click on those). I do open lots of tabs - from the links or from my bookmarks (via ctrl-shift since middle clicks don't work in toolbars or menu items) - I almost never have the need for a blank tab that way since I open everything in new tabs directly... and anything I'd need to type a url for I probably either already have bookmarked or found... from a link.

>> How would you improve it? It seems quite well
>> designed and straight forward to me. It displays
>> open pages and history, as well as a bar to type
>> in URLs, with auto-complete like the standard
>> address bar.

Adding detection for url's/favicons that have been dragged/added as buttons to the toolbars would be a start alongside perhaps adding drag and drop from those (though the ability to drag a tab to the speed dial page is nice), and perhaps 'trimming down' the history a notch or two on redundant entries (same url listed five times - Whiskey tango foxtrot). The 'Frequently visited' list showing a bunch of pages I've only visited once (albeit today) sure didn't help, especially with certain pages I've visited over 20 times a day (like the ones I maintain) the past year not even making the cut. (when they too are on my address bar as buttons!) Maybe, Just MAYBE have an option to add from the users BOOKMARKS?!?

A lot of my 'objection' also stems from appearance - since it doesn't use the same fonts or styling as the rest of the application. It does not use the same fonts as the menus, dialogs and windows as the rest of opera... or those of the host OS - The net result looks and feels more like a java swing crapplet than something integrated into the application... hell, whatever font renderer they are using it's not even using the anti-aliasing/font smoothing technologies available in Windows, OSX or Linux (I just checked all three!) The fonts and general appearance looks like crap compared to the entire rest of what's running. Not a make or break functionality issue for sure, but a matter of polish that they'll likely get to sooner or later.

>> That's very strange. For me shift-clicking,
>> ctrl+shift-clicking, and middle-button clicking all
>> worked as expected on the Speed Dial buttons.

Using the mouse to click on the buttons on the speed dial page - YES. I was referring to the entire point of speed dial, which is supposed to be a KEYBOARD shortcut (it does seem to be the only part of it that is explained on any of the websites on the subject - you have to dig into forum posts for anything more). So far we have CTRL-1 through CTRL-9 which open in the current tab. CTRL-SHIFT-1 through CTRL-SHIFT-9 has been used to remap the old CTRL-# keys opening up certain side panel elements. There's no built in keyboard shortcut to the speed dials for opening them in new tabs (or a option to set that as the default behavior) - Though I believe one should be able to add that functionality since you can create your own key mappings as easily as you can create your own toolbar buttons - I just need to remember how to do it.

>> I've certainly never had any comments about it
>> from people who've tried Opera on my
>> recommendation. I guess not everyone is quite so
>> shallow...

I'm in New England - as a rule we are not friendly people, and when it comes to the white collar criminal ******** who run Boston area businesses wearing the five hundred dollar suits every day, they are less than receptive to that sort of thing. (in fact if you used the language they use when encountering people of that appearance in a truck stop, a trucker say "hey, watch your mouth there are mechanics in here")

Edited 2007-04-11 20:59