Some time ago there was quite a discussion on the new tab page and 'Most Visited Sites' and how to disable it or replace it with something else.

Our moderator Stamga at one point provided a list of sites that provided a speed dial function.

http://www.only2clicks.com/
http://www.safaridial.com/
http://www.speedymarks.com/
http://www.tizmos.com/
http://www.hyperigo.com/
http://www.myclusta.com/
http://www.3x3links.com/
http://www.homepagestartup.com/

Stamga himself preferred SafariDial (SD)...

I took it upon myself to have a look at them all in more detail and the 2 I put at the top of the list along with SD were SpeedyMarks (SM) and Only2Clicks

They all provide a thumbnail view of your favourite sites ...

Safari Dial is nice and clean and allows you up to 9 thumbnails
You can open your site in any mode by right clicking on the thumbnail
By default it opens in the same tab

SpeedyMarks has no limit to the number of thumbnails you can create

1. You have the option to ONLY store your information locally
2. The option to open in a new tab/window
3. Ability to reposition thumbnails (right or left only)
4. Choice of thumbnail size (suggest small, normal is reeeeeally big)
5. Customisable background, (dark blue is nice :-))

Downside

It uses a Google accounts to store your details so you need to create one if you haven't already got one ...

No right click option for opening thumbnails in Incognito mode or new window, so if you want to use SM in Incognito mode you need to open it in Incognito mode ...

Only2Clicks (My favourite)

As well as most of the features of SpeedyMarks it has some distinct advantages ...

1. You don't need to have a Google account, you just use your own Email address to create an account
2. Right Clicking on a thumbnail allows you to open a site in any mode eg New tab, New Window, Incognito Mode etc (can't be done in SpeedyMarks)
3. Full drag and drop for repositioning thumbnails (Mega!!) includes copying and/or moving to another tab. (SpeedyMarks only allows left or right movement in a single tab)
4. Create separate tabs for your thumbnails eg Favourites, Support, Social etc (Mega!!)
5. Easy option to include search box (customisable) on each tab (search box option)
6. Nifty Bookmarklet for adding new sites to your tabs (saves having to copy and paste URLs)
7.Ability to include notes for each website

As I, and others, have said previously your browser of choice and how you customise it is down to personal choice, however I thoroughly recommend giving Only2Clicks a try ...

Enjoy :-D

Nice review of speed dials there StevePaul !
I think i'll try your suggestion.. I like the default most visited but sometimes i'd like more control.

And as a quick reminder, you can use those speed dials as your default new tab page using CustomNewTab.

Still Like to have a blank page as my new tab ...

As it says I'm still only 2 clicks away from my favourite sites, or 3 if I need to go to one of my other tabs :-)

Only2Clicks has some great features but I still prefer SafariDial.. it would be nice to have drag and drop in SD though

@Stamga

Thought you might, your well into your white space ...

The thing about SD is that it will work anywhere on anything ...

I know when I spoke to them (via Email) about increasing the number of thumbnails it would mean them having to host the page on a website (bit like SM) ....

The only problem with using something like O2C is that after using it, only having 9 thumbnails seems a bit limiting ...

add this to the bookmarks bar

javascript:z=document.createElement('script');z.src='http://www.only2clicks.com/bookmarklet.php';z.type='text/javascript';void(document.body.appendChild(z));

and name it add to only2clicks :-)