abc@home

Though with familiar appearance, Speed dial 3.0, is a completely rewritten to overcome limitations of its HTML based ancestors. Speed dial 3.0 is much faster, more resources friendly, and has more features.

Faster Loading

The previous versions load the Speed Dial web page to the blank page whenever a blank page is opened. Though the loading takes barely 1 second, it consumes very high CPU and is obviously slower than the original Speed Dial function by Opera, which is non HTML based. Now Speed Dial 3.0 practically takes no time and consumes no CPU to load.

More Resource Friendly

Web page with complicated dhtml and extensive graphics consumes a lot of memory. And for nicer visual effect, the previous versions uses extremely memory hungry CSS filter of IE. The memory usage (physical and virtual) of speed dial 3.0 is around 10~25% of the previous versions, though speed dial 3.0 has even cooler visual effects and more powerful features.

Note for minimal flickering, speed dial 3.0 uses more GDI intensive approach, yet the usage is not any higher than previous versions. speed dial 3.0 uses around 50 GDI objects for the base features, plus 4 GDI objects per dial. That is around 80 for 9 dials. The usage of GDI objects has little impact on performance but each application can uses only 10000 GDI objects by default.

More Powerful Functions

Multiple Pages

Now you can not only set how many speed dials you want on a page, but also the number of pages as well. Each speed dial page can be individually titled, and configured with different colors, background images etc for easier recognition. Pages can be switched with mousewheel or context menu. Each speed dial page is constructed only when the page is shown, so no extra resources is consumed until they are used. And each page even has individual config document to avoid impact on overall speed.

Higher Quality Preview

1. Capture Everything - Everything can be seen in Maxthon can be captured (background capture problem solved). While not sounding like a show stopper, but similar features/extensions actually cannot capture java applets or some complicated flash, like those in http://www.nba.com

Speed Dial 3.0


Opera 9.5


2. AntiAlias Resize - High speed and high quality antialias resize. Cannot be turned off but I doubt if anyone would, probably not even for PII users.

3. No Aspect Ratio Distortion - When browser is resized, the preview size and aspect ratio will be changed, so the preview will be inevitably distorted. Not for speed dial 3.0 which uses a unique method to dynamically adjust the height previewed

<<>>

4. Capture Delay - Some web page starts to run js or download certain contents after the page is fully loaded. Speed dial 3.0 can config a time delay so contents generated after page load can be captured if necessary.

More Configurable

- can hide close and refresh button
- can hide site border for cleaner look
- can set title, site border and background background color for each tab
- can set background image for each tab





Context Menus  

Search bar menu:


General menu:


Cooler Visual Effects

Drag & Drop:


Preview Update:



Changelog
3.2.0
- added clean search history command (search engine menu)
- added lock layout option to prevent accidental dragging (empty space context menu)
- added optional floating status bar to show dial url
- added plugin menu command to open Quick Access when Quick Access is disabled
- can open functional speed dial by clicking plugin button when Quick Access is enabled
- can open url in new tab with middle click

3.1.0
- reduced title and close/refresh button flickering
- improved compatibility with 2.5.x anti-freeze
- icon/background/thumbnail selection dialog now show supported file types only
- fixed problem that maxthon cannot be resized with speed dial shown
- fixed some minor problems under windows 7


Note

- it is necessary to re-configure for update from speed dial 2.x
- speed dial 3 does not support mouse gestures. If you need mouse gestures in speed dial page please don't update
- before update to new version, please disable speed dial and restart maxthon
- to use in maxthon 2.5.7 beta3 or later the internal Quick Access module must be deleted or renamed (...Maxthon2\Modules\MxSpeedDial)


Download

http://addons.maxthon.com/en/post/1471

UFO

so cool!
some notes:
1.you wrote utimate instead of ultimate.
2.can you add an option to put the update animation outside the small picture , yet in its frame?
3.the pages idea is great. can we also disable the pages? when i tried changing the title to just "speed-dial", it gave me "speed-dial (Speed Dial)" . when i changed it to just "1" , it became "1(Speed Dial)" and somehow it gave me an error and the thumbnails are shown in an odd way.
4.about the pages, can it also be chosen by tabs/buttons?
5.about the thumbnails, is it possible to scroll down if the page is bigger than the thumbnail?
6.is the bug of multiple update fixed from the previous version?
7.why does it still has 2 entries in the plugins menu?
8. it doesn't support unicode (or at least not hebrew) in the thumbnails titles.
9.i think that the mouse wheel doesn't work on the tabs bar anymore (for switching tabs) when the speed-dial has focus. maybe that's because it uses the wheel for switching between pages, but when i use the mouse wheel on the tab bar, none of those things happen.
10.about the background of page, can you please add option to strech it ?
11.it is much faster and better in many ways. thank you so much!

[ Last edited by UFO at 2008-9-25 18:33 ]

abc@home

Quote:

Original posted by UFO at 2008-9-25
2.can you add an option to put the update animation outside the small picture , yet in its frame?

I tried that as well but I really don't like the effect.

Quote:

3.the pages idea is great. can we also disable the pages? when i tried changing the title to just speed-dial, it gave me "speed-dial (Speed Dial)" .

You can set to 1 page. But you cannot remove "(Speed Dial)". It is used to identify the speed dial tab. Simple "Speed Dial" or custom title don't work as good.

Quote:

4.about the pages, can it also be chosen by tabs/buttons?

Tab bar will be added later

Quote:

5.about the thumbnails, is it possible to scroll down if the page is bigger than the thumbnail?

No, it is not supposed to be a web page.

Quote:

6.is the bug of multiple update fixed from the previous version?

Which bug? 3.0 is a completely rewrite so it may or may not have the bug of previous versions.

Quote:

7.why does it still has 2 entries in the plugins menu?

Reset your menu/plugin bar etc if that happen.

Quote:

8. it doesn't support unicode (or at least not hebrew) in the thumbnails titles.

Will fix

Quote:

9.i think that the mouse wheel doesn't work on the tabs bar anymore (for switching tabs) when the speed-dial has focus. maybe that's because it uses the wheel for switching between pages, but when i use the mouse wheel on the tab bar, none of those things happen.

You should be able to switch tab when the focus is on the speed dial, but not when the focus in on the combo box (search bar).

UFO

1.so it's supposed to be "utimate" ?
2.ok. doesn't bother me that much, especially since you decided not to hide the previous thumbnail.
3.what's wrong with just "speed dial" ? can i at least put there some kind of empty space instead?
4.+5. ok.
6.in the previous version, when it tried to update all of the thumbnails in the same time, it usually made maxthon to crash.
7.i meant the plugins menu which is on MSC , not the plugins toolbar. it uses "Speed Dial Thumb" and "Speed Dial".
8.thanks.
9.as soon as i switch to the speed-dial tab, i think the combobox takes the focus. it's a good thing, but it makes the switching by mouse wheel on the tabs bar impossible.
10.i've added this probably while you wrote your answers. please read it.

[ Last edited by UFO at 2008-9-25 19:14 ]

Whiteshark

Updated my translation for Speed Dial 3.0.4

SpeedDial_0x0410.zip (1.9 KB)

SpeedDial_0x0410.zip (1.9 KB)
Downloads: 338

2008-9-28 04:13

[ Last edited by Whiteshark at 2008-9-28 11:13 ]

Dev

there are only 3 standard searching engines

translate not coresponding (texts are moved)

but good work

[ Last edited by Dev at 2008-9-25 20:14 ]

UFO

the plugin also seems to work fine when i made maxthon to use the IE8beta2 rendering engine , as opposed to the previous version of this plugin.

Dev

it is great

R111

Thanks for the new update. i like it.
is it just me, open in new tab not working. anyone else?

when using only 1 page for speeddial, i think "page name" is not needed. cleaner i think.
also possible to add middle click to open in new tab?

johnnylegend

Wonderful, after holding on to 1.4.0 for so long an amazing update.

So far no major problems (high CPU usage with result in  Maxthon lockup) of any kind aside from some minor annoyances. One of them being the beloved "Local Machine Zone Lockdown" top bar being displayed and captured with all thumbs when using IE8. Since I don't want to disable the infobars the plugin has to be reconfigured. With local HTML pages putting the  "<!-- saved from url=(0014)about:internet -->" at the first line solved issues with the earlier version of SD, but you might already know how to fix it.


For the sake of portability it might be worth considering of storing relative paths if possible and when using a sub folder of the plugin instead of the full path.

Last thing that got my attention are the favicons being stored inside the PluginData folder. Not only do I find the collecting of favicons of Maxthon inside its Favicon folder far away from a good solution but then having plugins to start the same is even more unnecessary in my eyes. If they have to be saved at all why not use an already present folder so that not yet another place has to be cleaned periodically?


Quality of thumbs and its display has greatly improved, only that the file format did not. Is it not possible to store as PNGs?



Again, thanks for the new plugin.


---
First error, popped up while having SD page open and then clicking on a custom button for 'Quick URLs' in the Standard Toolbar. Hopefully it will stay at that one time. The thumbs had their borders missing until a restart of Maxthon.



[ Last edited by johnnylegend at 2008-9-25 22:44 ]

UFO

Quote:

First error, popped up while having SD page open and then clicking on a custom button for 'Quick URLs' in the Standard Toolbar. Hopefully it will stay at that one time. The thumbs had their borders missing until a restart of Maxthon

-yes, this is the error i described. the borders of the thumbnails are gone, but i think the plugin still works fine nevertheless.

ntzphyr

Wondered where you'd been the last couple of weeks abc@home, just installed it. Maybe ufo has a point about the tab name, I liked the old speed dial tab name "SPEED DIAL". Can always add number after the name, plus those parenthesis take up space!

abc@home

Quote:

Original posted by UFO at 2008-9-26 00:44
1.so it's supposed to be "utimate" ?

updated

Quote:

3.what's wrong with just "speed dial" ? can i at least put there some kind of empty space instead?

speed dial is too common in page title eg. when you search "speed dial". I'll see if this can be improved with only 1 page though.

Quote:

7.i meant the plugins menu which is on MSC , not the plugins toolbar. it uses "Speed Dial Thumb" and "Speed Dial".

speed dial thumb is still necessary for this version

Quote:

9.as soon as i switch to the speed-dial tab, i think the combobox takes the focus. it's a good thing, but it makes the switching by mouse wheel on the tabs bar impossible.

will see if this can be improved.

Quote:

10.about the background of page, can you please add option to strech it ?

will be added

abc@home

Quote:

Original posted by Whiteshark at 2008-9-26 01:15
Updated my translation ('Back Image' and 'Browse...' on the Edit dialog are missing)

18819

Also, 'Open a Dial by typing its number' doesn't work here.
The typed number is just written on the search bar or on the Maxthon address bar.
I remember that the same issue was fixed in the previous version

Edit: Opps, sorry i have overlooked your advice
- Automatic preview update, and open by pressing dial number has not yet finished (working on)

Thanks

abc@home

Quote:

Original posted by R111 at 2008-9-26 03:49
Thanks for the new update. i like it.
is it just me, open in new tab not working. anyone else?

when using only 1 page for speeddial, i think "page name" is not needed. cleaner i think.
also possible to add middle click to open in new tab?

Is the new tab opened and closed immediately? If so it is Adhunter's "block suspicious auto popup window" blocking it. But the plugin should detect this setting and alert the user, not sure why it doesn't happen.

It is more difficult to support middle click now but you can still use shift + click to open in new tab.

abc@home

Quote:

Original posted by johnnylegend at 2008-9-26 04:01
Wonderful, after holding on to 1.4.0 for so long an amazing update.

So far no major problems (high CPU usage with result in  Maxthon lockup) of any kind aside from some minor annoyances. One of them being the beloved "Local Machine Zone Lockdown" top bar being displayed and captured with all thumbs when using IE8. Since I don't want to disable the infobars the plugin has to be reconfigured. With local HTML pages putting the  "" at the first line solved issues with the earlier version of SD, but you might already know how to fix it.


For the sake of portability it might be worth considering of storing relative paths if possible and when using a sub folder of the plugin instead of the full path.

will fix

Quote:

Last thing that got my attention are the favicons being stored inside the PluginData folder. Not only do I find the collecting of favicons of Maxthon inside its Favicon folder far away from a good solution but then having plugins to start the same is even more unnecessary in my eyes. If they have to be saved at all why not use an already present folder so that not yet another place has to be cleaned periodically?

The plugin only stores favicon of the search engines which won't be too many. It tries to avoid using javas cript, which is necessary to get the favicon path of maxthon.

Quote:

Quality of thumbs and its display has greatly improved, only that the file format did not. Is it not possible to store as PNGs?

Thumbnails can be stored as pngs. But the plugin will have to convert them to/from bmps (the native format) very frequently. Since the thumbnails are stored locally, the larger file size should not be a big problem.

Quote:

First error, popped up while having SD page open and then clicking on a custom button for 'Quick URLs' in the Standard Toolbar. Hopefully it will stay at that one time. The thumbs had their borders missing until a restart of Maxthon.

How does the custom button open the "quick urls"? Does this problem always happen?

abc@home

Quote:

Original posted by ntzphyr at 2008-9-26 11:53
Wondered where you'd been the last couple of weeks abc@home, just installed it. Maybe ufo has a point about the tab name, I liked the old speed dial tab name "SPEED DIAL". Can always add number after the name, plus those parenthesis take up space!

The parenthesis are added intentionally for easier recognition of the speed dial tab. But will let you remove it if there is only 1 speed dial page.

Ldfa

French translation.

abc@home

Quote:

Original posted by Ldfa at 2008-9-26 16:40
French translation.

Thanks

johnnylegend

Quote:

Original posted by abc@home at 26-9-2008 10:22

How does the custom button open the "quick urls"? Does this problem always happen?

I've had this happen now another two times. Once After clicking on a Speed Dial thumb and next time while having SD open and an external program calling a website to Maxthon. Those are unlikely the cause of the error and slow death of the plugin. So far I have been unable to locate the exact reason.


What do you mean "how the Quick urls open"? When you click an entry, a new tab will be created or the site loaded in the blank page from SD.