My browser home/start page setting is blank. What about yours? Do you go to a certain page each time you open a new browser window? If you do, what page is it and why do you find it handy to have it load every time you open a new browser window?
Used to be blank until Firefox set it to the Google/Firefox Start with the 1.0 release. I've left it there since I do actually make use of the search box every once in awhile.
Mine is blank as well. I don't think there is one page that I need every time I load up my web browser, so I just start from scratch each time.
But then again, I rarely use Bookmarks, either. I type out (or partially type out) most of the URLs I frequent.
At the office, mine is set to my task list on our intranet.
On my laptop, it is set to my blo.gs listing.
I find it useful to create a multi-colum html page of bookmarks I visit on a frequent basis. This way I'm not messing with drop-downs and folders for bookmarks I visit all the time. Organizing them by subject helps too: online docs, forums, design dailies (ala K10K), news sites, blogs and things I'll research to review at my leisure. Also handy are a few input boxes for useful sites like dictionary.com and the like.
Better would be if Safari generated this kind of thing with drag & drop functionality. Multi-column bookmarks, at a glance...how cool would that be?
I've got mine set to my personal intranet. I have 5 columns of information which include resources I have listed on the server, frequently visited web sites, search boxes for favorite sites, admin tools for web servers, etc.
I set it to Google even though I have the toolbar installed which makes it redundant.
I've set mine to google.com for about the past four years. I realized I was constantly spanning new windows (before tabs were around) to do searches for more info while doing blog posts. The habit of always doing research became a more regular thing as google continued to get better and so many times I started a browser with "I need to find info on..."
My browser picks up wherever I left off, whether that be with a ton of pages, or nothing. Usually nothing.
Muscle memory makes it trivial to start up Opera, hit ctrl-n and then type g-space whatever to start a Google search (my usual first step).
I've thought about creating some sort of dashboard (for lack of a better term) that monitors stats, sites, whatever. I'm just too lazy.
I've got SessionSaver installed, so it always loads the tabs i had when i closed it.
Good enough for me.
I have had mine set to blank ever since I can remember. I like to start with a clean slate. It also decreases my start-up time, and my frustration level when I start to type a URL and then the browser overwrites it because it just got done loading a new page.
"Multi-column bookmarks, at a glance...how cool would that be?"
Funny you should mention that, actually, my homepage is set to my bookmark app scribble and that is basically multi-column bookmarks at a glance. I sort of hid the set cookie functionality and should probably make that more obvious (it's buried in account settings now) since it is the key to using it as a homepage but I use it on every single browser at work. I don't have a persistent connection at home, however, so I do use about:blank; there.
At work, it's set to my company's site. At home, it's set to ESPN.
I've set mine to the random page on Wikipedia. Yeah it's a random city in the middle of Kentucky 9 times out 10, but that 1 time... what a time that is.
I personally like it set my PC's to blank default start page. I don't need the aggravation of waiting for some default connection to a remote server to before I can start using my browser. Plus I like the feeling of that emptiness -- it doesn't distract me from the intention I have when I opened the browser in the first place. (I can get distracted or sidetracked very easily and I try to take defensive measures where possible.) I also like the ability to click HOME to clear the page and start fresh. At work we have it set to the intranet homepage, which is useful because it has status/alerts that are not sent via email.
In Safari I use a blank page; Firefox I use the Google/Firefox start page.
The Google/Firefox page is pretty lightweight so it doesn't take long to load. More times than not, I'll just use the Google search box in leu of the start page.
Its a bit of a heavy load but being a machead mine is set to apple.com i've just never bothered to change it, although Google Suggest might be better. Its unnerving for me to see a blank screen when the browser loads. I like to know that it's working. (p.s. is there a way to skin the file http://37signals.com/cgi-bin/mt-comments.cgi? Because when you do a comment preview it goes there and its definitely not the SVN template.)
For any laptop I take to a client site, it's blank. At work it's set to myway.com as it's the only site I've found that I can customize with the news that interests me, add my own links, loads insanely fast, and is free. I set my home computer to the same, but my wife keeps setting it back to MomAdvice.com. *Sigh*
When starting Safari or Firefox I have Google. Opening a new tab I have blank page.
I miss a nice, fast loading, good looking fully customizeable portal, with news, weather, stock index etc. etc.
Google. It loads quickly and the best thing to have right in front of you in a new window is the best search engine there is.
My homepage is an auto post login to basecamp. Why, because I use it all the time.
OK, at the risk of coming off like a terrible suck up...
My homepage opens to my Ta-Da list. The reason for this is that the browser is my productivity enemy. I am too easily sidetracked reading user experience sites and justifying it as research when I need to be doing work.
Having the browser always open to a to-do list helps me stay on track.
Google News. It's the one time of the day when I connect with the Real World!
On my home profile it opens blank.
On my work profile it opens to our Basecamp install. Which, to be honest, I think I need to change. It drives me nuts that the focus shifts from the address bar to the login box. I don't think this is a fault with Basecamp, just the way that I usually browse. I should probably just have it open blank...
I'm surprised there are no mentions for this yet, but I have mine set to a web based RSS reader. This way, when I open a new window I can see if there is anything fresh. This 37signals entry just had the number 1 spot (newest listing).
I use Kinja.com because it does not require a login once you set your feeds up and there is no distraction to get to the listing of posts. I have a Bloglines account, but it requires logging in and then selecting a feed or feed group to see the posts. Scanning the new posts from the homepage needs to be easier than that.
I can't believe I'm the only one that loads the Drudge Report.
I have mine go to daily dose of imagery. The first time I open it in the morning, it's nice to see a great new photo. Then, when I open a new browser later in the day, I enjoy revisiting that great photo. Nice alternative to PLC code and evil Operator Interface screens (doesn't this industry know anything about good HMI??).
Most of the time I use tabs to see new pages, and that is set to blank page so I don't get sick of daily dose.
I have my home page set to an online feed aggregator, but I have the browser configured to show a blank page rather than the home page when a new tab or browser window is opened.
So it's really blank, but the "home" button still goes somewhere.
Same setup as dmr. It is especially having a page of links with Firefox since I can quickly follow one with only a few keystrokes (type ahead find is the best feature ever).
Oh, and my page runs on localhost, so I don't have to worry about having a net connection when I start my browser. That's one thing I cannot stand, especially when my laptop isn't connected to any network.
My work machine goes to a page served by itself via Apache that has links to everything I need to get stuff done. (3 column page of links and forms.) At home my machines point to my main machine (again running Apache) and get a page full of links I need, though only new windows or a browser launch goes there, for a new tab in Firefox, it's a blank page, and I set it up this way long ago because of speed issues. On the kid's machines it's set to Google, though I might change that to Yahooligans...
Mine was Google until I became too annoyed with the fact that it automatically put the search box into focus when I wanted to do something else.
From then on it was blank until I found this:
http://www.marktaw.com/getbacktowork.htm
I've been contemplating a custom start page for some time, but I've yet to get around to it.
Machines at work -> intranet site
Personal machines -> Google.com
I built a custom start page about 3 years ago - it's got some horrid code, but it works, and has bookmarks, searches (google, wikipedia, thesaurus, encarta, dictionary), weather, the Onion, and a calendar. I only really use the bookmarks, because the rest I can really access through Firefox's address bar. However, I haven't found a site that displays bookmarks or things like that more interestingly than mine does, and I haven't built one myself, because what I have isn't so bad. It is very helpful for being unproductive.
A side-note, while I'm commenting, is that ta-da lists are fantastic because it is within my browser - when I'm off surfing elsewhere, I can instead go over to my list and be like, "aha! I need to do that"
I have mine set to ClickMates.
It's a roommate management suite that I developed with my roommates (ya kinda geeky). But basically it manages our communal bills, grocery lists, to-do lists, and messaging.
At work, mine is set to my employer's homepage.
At home it's blank. I then use the bookmarks/favorites to access my most often used links such as bank, email, netflix, web design links (like SvN), etc. A blank page loads quicker and I don't have to be online to get to it.
Drudge
I have mine set to my del.icio.us bookmarks. It seems helpful to look over what was interesting the last time I was at the computer.
my home/start page is my custom portal page. i like it because it has everything i visit / use frequently, such as a google search and frequently visited websites. 9 times out of 10 when i open a new tab, i'm going to one of those sites anyway, so i just save myself some typing :)
My start page is very often google (not quite sure why!), but I often just set it to something I'm working on. I find I can gain inspiration by the site just flicking up, you can see instant/obvious problems you might not have noticed otherwise.
My Feeds at Bloglines. I'm an information junkie and feel disconnected from the world when I can't read whats going on in the world.
Mine is set to a couple of sites using the | thingy to separate urls in firefox. So it opens a tab for google, two internal stat pages, kinja and the BBC news site.
My home page is blank. Has been for years. Though I go to the same dozen sites whenever I open a new browser window, I don't know which one that's going to be ahead of time. Then again, perhaps my subscribed-to-the-gills NetNewsWire can be considered a 'start page'.
I used to have a web page with links to all my required resources online. Later I moved to a blank stage, than to my blog and after the Firefox 1.0 upgrade I just left the Google/Firefox start screen.
On my laptop it is blank.
On my desktop it goes to a page I created on my site. It has my bloglines blogroll, some listing stuff, and a bunch of other things I like to look at. Basically my own little portal of things I feel I should see.
I had mine set to blank for a long time, but now it's set to my TaDa list. This helps me to remember to get to work rather than putzing around on the internet.
Josh and Phil,
You guys are geniuses and I wish I could set my homepage to the same as both of yours but for highly converse reasons.
Hrm, interesting discussion - I never realized so many people started out with a blank homepage. I think all that white would overwhelm me.
For a long time, both my home and work homepages were set to a handrolled page similar to the multi-column bookmark pages people have mentioned. It included favorite sites on one side, news pulled from RSS feeds in the center, and important personal sites (coded only to show for specific IP addresses) on the other side. It took more work to maintain than simply saving bookmarks and using a feedreader, so I've switched to my website's homepage at home (to encourage me to update often). At work, I have two tabs open: BlogLines and my work site (which will be switching to our Intranet as it progresses).
I'm also curious how many people leave their web browser open all the time. Mine stays open pretty much from whenever the computer is turned on (it's one of my startup items) until it is turned off. The only time I close it is if for some reason I need to quit or it crashes.
blank. I've always hated having anything other than a blank page as my home page, although I tried having Google as my home page for a while and that worked okay. But I prefer blank. Or as Internet Explorer likes to call it, about:blank
blank is the way to go...screw the browser trying to load anything upon every new window that opens. that would drive me insane.
google.com. I highly recommend it. Worth checking out. :)
I use the bookmark group feature in Firefox - bloglines, my friends' discussion board, gmail and my work intranet are all the first pages that pop up into my browser when I open it each morning. At home it's bloglines, my friends' discussion board, gmail and my online college homepage. I chose those pages becuase I invariably use them at some point during the day and it saves me a click or two to just open them up and get it out of the way!
Can't believe no one else is using myhq.com.
It's multi-column bookmarks that you create using a simple (if a bit tortured -- could definitely use a 37signals redesign) user interface. It's free, you can customize the color scheme, number of columns, re-arrange links, put them in categories, etc. You can make your list of bookmarks public, if you want.
I put this as my startup page on every computer I use, so I always have access to the same set of bookmarks no matter where I am. And, if I add a new bookmark, it's instantly available on any other page that I use.
http://www.myhq.com/
...and some examples of the Public bookmark pages people have made (some are ugly and disorganized, others are clean and quite nice.. it's up to the person!)
http://www.myhq.com/public
I use my.yahoo.com for my homepage, heavily edited with AdBlock on Firefox to make it lighter and less obnoxious. If I can't hit it, then the net connection is probably down. I like the three column layout; 8 news feeds in the wide middle and numerous portlets on the narrow left and right (bookmarks, stock prices, weather, mapping, search, MyTeams scoreboard, calculator), and it refreshes every 15 minutes keeping me informed when news breaks. New tabs go blank though.
Used to be google, then myway.com, and for the past several months it's been bloglines.com
Whatever the lastest spyware infestation has set it to.
Seriously, I wander around from blank (not for a while, though, now that I think of it) to one of a couple different customized news/resource pages (my.yahoo.com, etc.) that I have set up.
A new 37 project?
I also have a page with the most important bookmarks. It also has a search field for google and my own knowledge base.
Now I'm using Huevos for search. I just have to press command-space and command-g to search on google from any application. To search wikipedia I press command-space and command-w...etc
A handrolled, multi-section page with all the sites I visit on a regular basis, links to all the admin interfaces for all the web apps I use (local and hosted), sprinkled throughout are search boxes for various services: google (search, groups, local & maps), a local business finder (not used much since google local was added), wikipedia, etc. It's hosted locally for speedy startup times and no errors if my connection is down.
Mine's still blank after all these years.
I guess I just don't want to be "sucked in" by some given site first thing in the morning. I keep all my daily bookmarks handy though.
So, blank it stays.
You know what I really need?
A firefox extension that syncs my bookmarks with a web based app.
That would be sweet. And useful!
Blank. No browser is going to tell me where to go!
Been happy with www.mypip.com for years. Easy to update three-column portal-like bookmark manager. I also use the browser Links toolbar to manage another set of Top 10 sites I visit every week/day.
http://www.mypip.com/
Since the advent of RSS, I almost never load my browser manually, it loads itself when I view some items. Then it's open for the rest of the day :-)
Blank of course. The practice started when I was still with dial-up. it was pretty annoying to load a page for every new windows, it really sucks the bandwidth.
I have a custom startup page (just loads off hard drive).
At work it has a set of forms/searches (including a google search) and frequently used links. Other people on my team started out by getting copies of it (one time my manager asked me to email a copy to the team email list), now many of them have customised it to their own needs.
At home it's basically the same with a different set of links.
Mine used to be (in the very recent past) my Kinja. Before that, it was Google.
Now, it's my aggregator on my server (Feed on Feeds).
Believe it or not, I use the default MSIE home page (unlike most people here, it seems). I even keep that as the default for Firefox.
I like the little fun articles they show in the home page; there's usually something of interest on it. I find it a nice diversion. It's easy enough to ctrl-k if I want to search, and ctrl-t doesn't go to the home page anyway.
I thought somebody would of already mentioned it but nobody has. The "other search engine" Yahoo. Some people dont like all that crap on the front page and prefer to use google. The only thing I use Yahoo for is the News section. When ever I get to work or home and fire up firefox I want to see what is going on in the world. I have the Google toolbar on Firefox and IE so it renders Google as my homepage useless.
I see the localhost, because a) that tells the network is up (loopback works, anyway), b) Apache is running okay, and c) it doesn't require a lengthly roundtrip to a remote server, which might be down.
Ditto on the tada list. Right now I'm in the midst of a job search, so it's a very helpful reminder before I go spinning into the time-sucking vortex that is the web. ;-)
basecamp dashboard
This is a very popular subject. I must take part or else I wouldn't be cool.
I actually have google news as the homepage on Safari... for my other computers I have it set to blank or my college's intranet.
I gotta say, I like the "dose o' imagery" idear... to steve who likes the MSN homepage... I gotta say I really hate it. I have a hotmail account i send spam to, and when i check it monthly I loath clicking "Sign Out" for risk of going to the worst major web portal in existance.
to that other guy, ta-da is like to-do... tadalist.com ...it's neat.
Nothing brightens a dreary winter day better than a little summer.
I've never used a home page. While I do often visit the same sites at the beginning of the day, setting a home page isn't that useful to me, for a few reasons:
- I often open new windows while I'm in the middle of browsing. No way do I want my browser loading the same page every time I do that.
- Heck, I don't even close my browser that often, so it's not like I launch it first thing every day. It's already open, often with something there.
- In Safari at least, you can't set multiple home pages. It might be useful to have it load a few different pages when I open my browser, but it's a lot less useful to just open one.
At best it only saves me a single click, and at worst it's a major annoyance. So I don't see much benefit. I like the Firefox start page (simple is good), but on the other hand you've already got a Google search box in the toolbar.
Reading all of this kinda motivates me to go write a firefox extension that only loads your start page once a browser "session"....
weather.com local forecast... in the midwest, it's essential to have the most current weather information... it dictates what you'll wear that day, how much time you should alot for your drive home or drive to work... it determines your mood.... i never really looked at weather.com when i lived in california....
geography still matters...
Mine is blank too. I however have some bookmarks sitting in my Safari Bookmarks bar that are easily wielded with Cmnd-1 to 9. Google sits at #1; I don't use Safari's build-in Google field.
My homepage is yahoo.com
It is a remnant from my early adoption of YahooMail. It is funny, but I rarely use their search engine.
You're not collecting URLs for the next Signal vs Noise app, are you? ;-) Maybe some sort of customisable home page web page?
Anyway, mine is macsurfer.com, though I don't have it load when a new window is displayed. With the advent of RSS I can keep in touch with most new content. But macsurfer still manages to catch a few stories that I haven't seen.
Can't believe nobody has said http://localhost/ yet!
Mine is blank too. I however have some bookmarks sitting in my Safari Bookmarks bar that are easily wielded with Cmnd-1 to 9
I set the start page as blank. Where the browser allows setting the home and start page separately (e.g. Safari) then I also set the home page to http://localhost/~[username]
...one for Matthew at last :)
http://www.google.com/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
i like Firefox's choice for a homepage.
and it's Google to boot!
Blank on the two machines at work and my photos page on the machine at home.
Using Firefox with the Google search built in at the top. I will often open a new tab and search from there for research and info. I now always open links in new tabs and not a new browser window.
Used to be blank until Firefox set it to the Google/Firefox Start with the 1.0 release. I've left it there since I do actually make use of the search box every once in awhile.
Same.
I had been using "about:blank" since the dawn of time... then Google/Firefox teamed up... and there was just something I found incredibly pleasing about it. So I kept it.
I've mainly been using the default Google search page currently as I found that I do more searching and it's pointless loading up my personal website when opening a new browser window. Previously I was using about:blank before that when I was on a slow link to the .net via UUnet South Africa. I tend to find at one job I had a customised homepage with links which I was going to often which was useful at that stage when I was into hardcore PHP programming.
Why, of course, it's set to my home page, which is here.
At work I have it set up for my project management timesheet... its what I use alot, nice and easy just to create a new window or launch Safari to log in and out of projects.
At home, on my desktop, firefox is loaded for gmail and on the laptop its loaded for bloglines... the two web apps I use most often.
I used to have K10K as a homepage, but now that I blogline it, I didnt need to look at the whole site all the time.
BBC News Online - I like to see what's new in the world when I fire my browser up.
Wow. Nearly 100 comments already. I figured since everyone else is doing it I might as well chime in my boring homepage: My Yahoo!.
So what if I'm old school?
i have mine set blank at work. at home, it's set to a (cue spooky music) mystery page, hosted on my web server. the content of the page is database driven. on this page is my weblog (with recent comments to come), my "hot list", and a "remember this" list as well. i use the remember this list to post myself messages about things i have to do. silly, but fun.
blank
Google - I'm constantly using it during start-up.
My home page points to my personal wiki/bookmarks site, but I really like Phil Dokas' ideas about the random Wikipedia page! I'm going to try that for a few days.
Mine's been blank for as long as I can remember. I never understood why people waited for a site to download every time they opened their browser when they'll just type in another URL in the address or immediately search with Google. With Google now built into Firefox, Safari, IE (with the Google bar) and others, who needs a start page anymore?
I set mine to my install of Alex King's Tasks 2.0 install. A very excellent hierarchical task/notes manager.
I'll leave the link out as it's a "sortof" competitor, but not really. Basecamp and Tasks are two entirely different beasts.
I have a livejournal that I use as a feed reader. So, I have that as my home page with Firefox, so I can quickly check the latest postings.
Opera, Mozilla, Netscape, and IE all point to localhost.
Google.
Reduces the chance of loosing a train of thought if I need an answer.
I use my blog site, with my blog site setup available through the favorites/bookmarks links folder and so just a click away. All my 100+ most-used links are on there, as is whatever I'm doing now (often dynamic pages show up in an iframe).
And if I want to test some HTML/JavaScript/CSS I just click on that link - if I want to test PHP, I write it in my web host and iframe it onto my blog. You'd be surprised how often I see something I want to change as soon as I pull my browser up.
I keep mine blank. I've trained myself to quickly use shortcut keys to get to the Address bar and type in the site I want to look at.
I have thought of a "personal homepage" of sorts but I can't figure out how to make it recognize the mood i'm in and give me what I want immediately! :)
Work home page at work, to set a good example.
Instapundit.com at home in IE (lightweight, often updated).
My Bloglines page in Firefox at home.
mine is set to http://www.linkwhores.com
its a bookmark storage site
cant live without it
I have mine set to google. Nine times out of ten when I cold-start a browser I'm going to be searching. So, nine times out of ten with one click I'm doing exactly what I intended.
At risk of tooting my own horn, I have my home page set to Lilisto, a home grown 'smart' bookmarks manager. I'll spare everyone the feature list, but I can say it greatly surpasses any other alternative - except for the utter cleanliness that is about: blank.
(Though still in development, I invite you to try it out though: new.lilisto.com u/p test / test)
news.google.com
A nice quick overview of what's going on in the world before I wander off to spend the rest of the day on less important but less depressing things.
My "home" page is simply MyYahoo news page. But I hardly see it anymore with the SessionSaver extension that remembers all the pages I had open before I closed Firefox. No more bookmarking tons of pages before shutting down the browser, just to forget that I've bookmarked them.
iRider for people stuck in the IE world does the same thing (and costs $25).
Blank baby. It's like starting a new design with a blank Photoshop page: full of opportunity.
Same as few guys above. It used to be blank - but then you launched the " tadalist". So now anytime i browse, i say to myself: Oh dear, do you really want to go out surfing when you have some much to accomplish. It's quite handy - really don't when i get back to blank again... (thanks for the app Jason. Next time you're in Paris i pay you a beer - that's the french version of Paypal!)
apple.com
i could probably pick something more useful or informative, but i never gave it much thought. and when the new products come out i'm greeted w/ a surprise of sorts.
man, i load up anywhere between 10 and 20 tabbed pages everyday as a "homepage". do others do this as well? i read about the blank thing... what about the opposite?
i change the selectionsa often, but it usually holds true that i include:
I was lurking here and learning from different approaches, although I've used a blank for as long as I can remember.
And today I stumbled upon BookmarksHome, and this coupled with your TadaList may well become my new Home.
I start my browser from the run box with the URL I want to go to or auto-google-search. I have shortcuts named "i" for internet (url) and "s" for search.
So I do Win-R, "i www.37signals.com", Enter
or
Win-R, "s blah blah", Enter
which takes me to google.com/search?q=blah%20blah
So I never see my home page, which is blank.
A couple of questions for those of you who've rolled your own homepage...
What technology have you used, simple HTML? Some in-page CSS? Some Javascript?
Have you used some server-side, maybe ASP or PHP and therefore the page requires hosting on a local Apache or IIS Web Server?
If you want to add a URL to one of your multi-column URL lists, do you fire up your fave text editor and get down and dirty by editing the HTML directly or have you been "cleverer" than that (DB-driven)? I say "cleverer" because sometimes the best solutions are the simpler (edit the HTML).
Great thread, given me lots of ideas over and above the about:blank that I use for my homepage.
Carl
I set Google, too. But
that's a page I merged Google's main search features for myself. And loading it from my hard disk, it's very fast when I just need search.
Hey Thomas David Baker ... you are a prime candidate to download and try ActiveWords.
I left my startpage blank as well--before I got hooked on Google News.
Google News guarantees that it will be no less than 5 minutes before I actually get to task. Talk about productivity killer.
This is going to sound bad, but I use my blog as my homepage. Since I have a long blogroll and links to essentially every site I regularly read on there, it's a good starting point for me to catch up on the news, read my online comics, etc. Also reminds me to blog about the interesting things I find on a fairly regular basis.
I have always had my browser point to a blank page too. Just recently I have changed it to the homepage of the company I work for. I have an Alexa toolbar (www.alexa.com), and hitting our homepage every time I open a browser adds to the counts on Alexa worldwide site rankings. The reason to do this is that some of the large search-engines use the Alexa site ranking to sort their search results in a way that is relevant to surfers.
I have mine set to google.co.uk, it's not like ti takes for ever to load. altought i never stay there, when ever i want to google soemthign i jsut open up a new tab a press home to get to google saves typeing it in all the time.
there is a google bar on firefox but i never like thous things i dont even use my quick links, i guess i jsut like to type everything, that why when my pc dies I know all the pages i use in my head and i dont have to relai up my my favrites. altought i am now using del.ici.us.
But you neve know how lonf that will last.