Hello Bobby,

Regarding your issues:
1) the add-on is not taking data from remote server, if it loads more than half a second, something is very wrong, make sure your homepage is properly set following steps in Options page / first line. Also there are known issues in "Ghostery" add-on that causes performance issues in my add-on.

2) there is option in Options page to open dials page directly when toolbar icon is pressed

3) there is another add-on that adds this functionality:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ctrl_groupspeeddial/

If you have more issues, feel free to write me to my support e-mail.

Have a nice day and happy holidays :)

Best regards,
Juraj Mäsiar