For years I have been using and depending on a certain Firefox Add-on. This add-on has been very useful since I am a visual thinker. It is called Fast Dial and is created by UserLogos.org.

Since I can remember this add-on has ‘broken’ with each major Firefox upgrade. This wasn’t too much of a problem until Mozilla recently switched to a rapid deployment, similar to Google Chrome. Since then, this add-on has been ‘breaking’ almost every month or two, requiring me to go find the ‘unapproved’ beta, download, and install it.

Well yesterday, when I upgraded to Firefox 8 and Fast Dial broke, I was fed up. So I created my own html page to mimic the functionality of Fast Dial. Granted it doesn’t have all of the fancy resizing that Fast Dial has and if I want to change something I need to edit the html page and re-upload it, but… it won’t break, I can access it on any browser on any computer any where in the world where there is internet. I can even access it on my iPhone, though I haven’t tried it yet.

I call it FastDialer. Feel free to take the code and copy it, make it your own. It’s only when I make an interface for updating the ‘dials’ that I will start packaging it and posting it as something. The images, however, are Helveticons (I love ’em) which are not free. My company has the complete license.

For now, it is simply my personal launch page that I use on my work computer.