🟦 GSD 28.3: 📂 Folders + ⚡ Actions = 🎉 (Patreon)

Group Speed Dial 28 is a big release, packed with two new exciting PRO features - but both are somewhat experimental, so small bugs are expected.

📂 Folders

You can now organize your groups into folders!

To create a new folder, right click a group name and select "Create new folder".

This will open new "Edit folder" window (see the image above), where you can add more groups into the folder.

ℹ️ I will make a video tutorial soon, and I'll add it to the documentation:https://github.com/fastaddons/GroupSpeedDial/wiki/Organize-groups

Note that adding a Folder will slightly increase groups list height. I'll see if I can make it more compact and more visually appealing in the upcoming release. (after organizing my own 61 groups into 7 folders I can see some room for improvement)

⚡ Automated Actions

Many of you surely know some page, that forces you click a (Login) button, or scroll somewhere, every time you visit it.

Group Speed Dial can now perform some simple actions on a page, if you opened it by clicking a dial.

And these automated actions works also on Live dials!

⚠️ Creating Actions requires some HTML knowledge. I will record a tutorial video in the near future explaining how to use this feature without studying HTML much.

In the meantime, if you need help setting up a click action for a specific page, feel free to contact me by email or create a new topic here.

ℹ️ There is also a work in progress documentation:https://github.com/fastaddons/GroupSpeedDial/wiki/Automated-Actions

🎨 Visual upgrades

As you may have noticed, the groups list looks a bit different - it's no longer bold, it's a bit taller, and the text is bigger too. Also group icons are now by default blue:

All these changes should make it look more professional, and consistent with modern design standards. But if you want, you can revert any of them in the Options page / Groups tab.

🟨 Changing colors for single-color (monochromatic) iconsDid you find a nice icon but the color doesn't go well the background?For example the icon is black, but your background is also black, so the only thing you can do is change the dial background color... well, not anymore!

Using the new "Apply as mask" switch, you can change color of any image - as long as it has a transparent background (works best on vector SVG images).

🖼️ Slideshow backgroundThere is a new background option available - Slideshow.Simply load your favorite images and they will be used as your background in a set interval:

And similarly to "Bing image of the day" option, you can control the slideshow from the main menu, or when you right-click on empty space and select "Next image".

Options page / Background tab has also a new section on top:

📈 Other upgrades:

🔍 Search dial now remembers your input when you navigate back!The focus (cursor) will be placed back to the search field, so you can re-search easily.ℹ️ TIP: use middle-mouse-button click on any of the ➡️ arrows to open the search in a new tab(s)

🚥 Performance improvementsThanks to modern design patterns, memory improvements and BigInt, some operations are now ~3x faster (for example opening "History / backups").

📃 Change logI would love to list all other exciting upgrades, fixes, and changes in the code, but I have a feeling it's only exciting for me :).But if you are interested, the full changelog for the versions 27.2 and 28.3, is available here:https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/groupspeeddial/versions/

⏭️ What's next

Apart from upgrading the newly added Folders and Actions, there are 3 main areas I plan to work on the upcoming weeks:

1. writing documentation and recording tutorial videos

2. upgrading the Cloud dials webpage - currently based on very old version 24.7, which doesn't support all these new features. New Cloud dials page will be also finally editable! 🎉 This means you will be able to see and edit your dials on browsers where you can't install the Group Speed Dial extension! And it will work even without an account.

3. implement End to End encryption - this will allow maximum privacy as data will be encrypted already on your device.

But as always, I plan to implement also many other smaller features/fixes from my ever-growing todo list.

💌 Thank you all for supporting my work and I wish you all a great summer :)

Best Regards,Juraj Mäsiar(Slovakia)