ChangeLog: Opera has your favorite sites on speed dial

Opera released a minor update to the 9.x series of its browser today, adding a “speed dial” feature that lets you browse to up to nine of your favorite sites even faster.

We reviewed Opera when 9.0 beta was released, and 9.2 only sports one major new feature. But its “speed dial” is worth upgrading for if you’re already using Opera, and might even be worth a look if you’re using another browser.

Opera 9.2 speed dial – click to view

When you open a new tab in Opera 9.2 you’ll see nine numbered boxes, each with text saying “Click to add a Web page.” When you click on the box, Opera displays a list of pages you’ve browsed to recently, and a text box where you can enter a URL if you want to add a page that’s not listed.

After you’ve populated the speed dial buttons, you can open a new tab and click on the button to go to your favorite site, or just press Ctrl-n, where n is the number of the site you want to navigate to. So, if you have Linux.com as your fifth speed dial button, just hit Ctrl-5 and Opera will head straight to that page.

The feature also works by entering the number of the site in the location bar, so typing Ctrl-l and then the number of the site and pressing Enter will take you there.

Opera 9.2 is available for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, and FreeBSD. Linux packages are available for x86, PowerPC, and SPARC hardware.