Fast Dial is a great little Firefox add-on that gives you the speed dial functionality found in Opera. Rather, I should say it was a great add-on. I have just this minute updated to the latest version (2.15) and been greeted by some rather unwelcome modifications:

• An unwanted searchbox has found its way to the top of the page
• A sponsored link has been added in place of one of my shortcuts
• Another tab has been taken up to take me to the User Logos website
• The User Logos search engine has been added, as default, to my search bar

I followed the link from the Firefox add-on page to the official homepage of the project, only to be redirected and have pop-ups thrown at me (blocked, naturally). It seems reasonable to conclude that this add-on has been monetized by a team that didn’t know how to do it tastefully and respectfully (or the project was co-opted by the spam mafia!)

Speed Dial is an alternative that I have used before. I prefered Fast Dial for its simplicity, but I guess I will give Speed Dial another look.