PS.: I got two pop-ups today (December 21) of the same nature, this time while using Facebook. I think we can rule out Speed Dial as the reason.—JY
For the Firefox boffins out there, I began using Super Start, after having trialled Speed Dial and Fast Dial over the past year or so.
These replicate what Opera users are used to with their Speed Dial, and what Google Toolbar users have with their menus. Your most accessed websites are shown to you in thumbnail format when you open a new tab.
Super Start is probably the best of them all so far. It’s compact, doesn’t seem to drain the resources, and you can program more than the eight that it comes with (I presently have 12).
I only began seeking an alternative to Speed Dial because OpenX ad pop-ups began appearing. I don’t know what was causing them, but since I work with only a small handful of sites, it seemed odd that these were appearing each time I opened a new tab, usually to begin searching with Duck Duck Go. I was reasonably sure they were not coming with the search engine, Facebook or our own company sites. They were quite hard to get rid of, with a script that had a new window open up if you closed the first.
I have no proof that these were connected to Speed Dial, and they could have come from any website that I visited. Maybe there was a delay from another website (not uncommon). However, it’s equally odd that they have ceased to appear after I deleted Speed Dial and replaced it with Super Start. To my knowledge, Speed Dial sent me no notification of a recent update that might have brought with it these pop-ups. At best, Speed Dial was the victim of unfortunate timing.
Again, I’m blogging this in case other computer users have had the same issue creep up recently. Maybe we can narrow down the cause of these sudden pop-ups.