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The Internet

What's Your Browser Start Page? 174

Posted by Cliff from the internet-starting-lines dept.
prostoalex asks: "I was just reading an Associated Press story on the most popular Web destinations, where it's noted how the companies are vying for user's attention to become an access point to the Internet. Slashdot's readership is probably not the one to stick to the start page provided by their ISP or their browser manufacturer. What's your browsers start page? A third-party site like Google or Yahoo!? A customized page like My Yahoo! or My MSN? Personal Web site or local HTML file with your favorite bookmarks? about:blank?"
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What's Your Browser Start Page? More

What's Your Browser Start Page?

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  • about:blank (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Peartree ( 199737 ) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (dnim3ldi)> on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @10:58PM (#8652240) Homepage
    Nuthin better. Good & fast...
    • And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.

      from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15

    • Re:about:blank (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Foolhardy ( 664051 ) <`csmith32' `at' `gmail.com'> on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @11:35PM (#8652533)
      When I start my browser, I already have a page I want to go to in mind; why bother to load another first?

      • Re:about:blank (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Rick the Red ( 307103 ) <Rick.The.Red@nOsPaM.gmail.com> on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @12:48AM (#8653018) Journal
        I used to feel the same way; my home page was about:blank for years. Now my home page is Astronomy Picture of the Day. [nasa.gov] I'm interested in astronomy and this page is different every day. That makes it a double bonus: I don't get bored with my home page, and I want to visit APOD anyway -- this way I don't forget.
        • For the life of me, I can't figure out why your comment was modded "Funny", but thanks for the good idea. I used about:blank too, and I never think to check the APOTD site even though I always enjoy it when somebody sends me the link. Cool. Thanks.
      • It seems like as often as not I don't know where I want to go so I start with Google.
      • Exactly. For IE and Mozilla, my start page is about:blank.

        For Opera, OTOH, I have no less than 10 windows - all places I visit frequently or with articles, etc. I haven't yet finished reading - which load on startup. The MDI and "continue where I was browsing last time" features of Opera are WONDERFUL.

    • Re:about:blank (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Kris_J ( 10111 ) *
      At home: blank, at work: a funky little corporate homepage I designed for all the staff to give them quick access to the corporate BBS, web portal, webmail, homepage and calendar.
    • Well actually mine is just empty as I use opera but the idea is the same.

      Start pages are used by people who complain their internet is slow. Small office with a dozen or so people sharing a DSL all using start pages and complaining it is slow. DUH.

      Don't they realize that every time they open a window with a start page, wich 99% of the time they don't want, they waste network resources? Sure with proper caching and proxy it wouldn't matter to much but that is of course never the case.

      Start page? Never use

    • I prefer simply "about:". I have so many browsers installed, including obsolete browsers with security flaws, that I prefer the browser identify itself first so I can confirm which one and what version I'm running. And all the content is local.

  • I have two start pages (Score:5, Informative)

    by titaniam ( 635291 ) * <slashdot@drpa.us> on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @10:59PM (#8652242) Homepage Journal
    I use firefox, you insensitive clod. I have as many start pages as I like! I actually use only two: drpa.us [drpa.us] and peter-a-andrews.com/links.html [peter-a-andrews.com], both of which are my personal pages.

  • Slashdot (Score:3, Informative)

    by cyberman11 ( 581822 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @10:59PM (#8652243)
    Duh. Actually, for a while it was the New York Times. Then Geek.com. For the last few years, it's been Slashdot.

    • Re:Slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)

      by hawkstone ( 233083 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @11:23PM (#8652445)
      For me it's slashdot as well.

      But to make things better, my top four slashboxes are:
      1. Mine, with links to commonly visited sites like dictionary.com (would the editors please add one for this!) and gamespot.
      2. Google!
      3. AllMusic
      4. Pricewatch

      Therefore, I have google and slashdot, as well as some other sites, as my homepage.

  • Google News (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) * on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @10:59PM (#8652245) Journal
    news.google.com

    Haven't switched since they started it.

    • Re:Google News (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sreeram ( 67706 )
      Me, too.

      The only thing I hate is that it's the "Search News" button that grabs the <Enter> key by default (when you type something into the text box). I hate being forced to use my mouse and click on the "Search Web" button.

      I don't have their toolbar (and refuse to install it). I wish they would allow a preference setting to change the default search. I mean, come on, how many people search for news items, even from news.google.com?

    • Re:Google News (Score:3, Informative)

      by mcskoufis ( 189400 )
      Had the same site till recently I read in one of the newsletters I receive about Yahoo having a similar website that updates from 75 000 news sources instead of 4500 !!

      Have you checked Yahoo News [yahoo.com] ?

      • Re:Google News (Score:4, Informative)

        by costas ( 38724 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @11:27PM (#8652473) Homepage
        GN is good, but does it let you program personal searches every time you visit? does it learn the subject you're more interested in and suggest new articles on the front page every day? does it let you add to its news feeds directly? give you personal XML and PDA feeds to take home? let you share your favorite stories with friends (automatically)? No, not yet anyway... until then there is memigo [memigo.com] [end of shameless plug]
      • Well, whether they have 75,000 news sources or not, they only put stories from a few of the same sources on every page. Looking through the news stories, it looks like a good 80% of the stories at least are all from AP and Reuters. What good is 75,000 news sources (and that seems like an unreasonably high number) if they only use a couple?

        current front page Yahoo! News: 8 AP, 6 Reuters, 1 USAToday

        current front page Google News: 3 Reuters, 1 Bloomberg, 3 Washington Post, 1 GEO, 1 ABN CBS, 1 Guardian, 1 NY
    • You can key a search directly from it, and that way I get a ten-second newsburst every time I start a browser.

      I also have Google translation [google.com] buttons on my corporate pages [cyberknights.com.au]. Handy si usted sabe hablar solamente espanol (oder Deutscher).

      They also get points for backing away from a public offering and the potential for all of that money in favour of doing things properly.

  • a locally cached super-search page (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ArmorFiend ( 151674 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @10:59PM (#8652250) Homepage Journal
    My start page has four text areas:

    google search
    alta-vista search
    google groups search
    debian package search

    its locally cached, so load time is epsilon.

  • Drudge baby (Score:2, Interesting)

    by toddlg ( 319712 )
    www.drudgereport.com [drudgereport.com]

    followed by
    Slashdot
    myYahoo with RSS beta &
    Fark

    and that will usually waste 1-2 hours for me each morning...
  • It's slashdot :-\

    I'm sure if i changed that, i'd get WAY more done.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) * on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @11:01PM (#8652268)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Are you planning on becoming a geography buff? When I did this, at least half of the random pages were entries for some small city I had never heard of and don't ever plan on visiting. It would be a much better idea if the Wiki folks would do a random page without this stuff.

    • Re:Wikipedia! (Score:2, Redundant)

      by Apreche ( 239272 )
      Mine is blank, always has been. but I might consider this wikipedia thing, it suits me nicely.

  • Google because it is fast and frequently used. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @11:01PM (#8652274)
    I use plain Google [google.com] (my wife uses Google advanced [google.com] ) because its the most used page on the internet for us. I previously to use a customized Yahoo finance page (an Excite page before that) but they took too long to load.

  • US CERT (Score:4, Funny)

    by kalidasa ( 577403 ) * on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @11:02PM (#8652281) Journal
    Because that way, I know what I'm in for when I get into work.

    • Re:US CERT (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Klaruz ( 734 )
      Bah, cert.mil is my cert of choice. It's an uphill battle every day. Thanks bill.

      I do use google for my home page, however I may switch to the random wikipidia entry mention elsewhere for home use and keep google at work.
  • I've been using about:blank for years now, and really was too lazy to change from home.netscape.com before that.

    I do it to decrease loading times. There are certainly about 10 websites I routinely look at each day, but I might not be popping up a window to look at any of those.

    Also, back around when I switched to about:blank, I was having trouble with my Internet connection's reliability. I think I was using a free Internet provider on a 486 running Linux or something... no joke. Not automatically loading
    • Yeah, I've always preferred a blank start page. I only rarely launch my browser directly these days, though. I have my bookmarks in KDE's MacOS-style menubar, KNewsTicker / Kontact have the sites I frequently visit which have RSS feeds, and a URL in thr Run dialog takes care of anything else.

      Though I admit that I don't use the bookmarks much anymore. Just entering the URL from the Run dialog is faster for me, and all the sites I like to visit are in the autocomplete history.

  • Ballsome.com (Score:3, Insightful)

    by joeljkp ( 254783 ) <joeljkparker.gmail@com> on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @11:07PM (#8652328)
    ballsome.com [ballsome.com], my personal site.

    I figure if I don't like looking at it every time I open a browser window, nobody else will.
  • Simple, the copy of sun jdk documentation. The javadoc kicks ass, and I am more likely to need a browser fresh opened there than anywhere else.


    That and typing /Users/sporty/Documents/java/.... is really friggin' long. :)

  • The Wikipedia random page [wikipedia.org] is great. Half the time it's a random town, other time it's random people, but then every few days it's something really cool that I never knew before.

    Before that, it was news.google.com [google.com] for a few months, and before that it was Slashdot for many years.

  • myhq.com (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Chris Brewer ( 66818 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @11:13PM (#8652380) Journal
    It's an online bookmark manager which means I can access my bookmarks from home, work, client sites, etc. without having to sync.
  • Okay, lets see if someone's already tried this...go ahead and do a type-ahead find...

    /pr0n
    Text not found: pr0n

    Okay, maybe they spelled it differently...

    /porn
    Text not found: porn

    Holy shit. Nobody has thought of that yet. What is (not?) wrong with you folks?!??!?! this is slashdot, for crissake!

  • in the middle of my XP desktop are 4 bookmarks

    Slashdot, google, the in network veo camera [amazon.com] that I use to look in on my son, and something else I don't want to name

    I can click any of them to start there.. but if I click home, that's google.-- but, I have four start pages

  • My home page is nothing. Since I have a Google seach field on my toolbar, having Google as a home page seemed needless.

  • about 63 different pages... (Score:4, Informative)

    by rusty0101 ( 565565 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @11:19PM (#8652423) Homepage Journal
    Galeon opens in 9 workspaces, with seven tabs per workspace. (give or take a tab in a couple of them.)
    News workpsace has MyYahoo, Slashdot, Linux Today, Google News, Cnn.com, CnetNews, and a local newspaper.
    Four workspaces are for some "social" site or another. One workspace has a whole bunch of blank tabs that I can google directly into as needed, a couple of "My Portal" tabs built by Galeon, mostly for those once or twice a week or month sites.

    That's just at home. Since it's linux, I don't need to reboot it often, so I don't worry too much about "launch" time.

    At work, where I do worry a bit more about launch time, I have a custom page of work and personal relavent links that I update from time to time.

    -Rusty

  • This should be a poll (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shadowbearer ( 554144 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @11:19PM (#8652427) Homepage Journal


    Inaccurate or no, it would be better that way.

    SB
  • I guess it comes from when I got my first computer after using computer labs to create a stupid vanity fanboy page. When I got my own computer one of the first things I did when I got on the net for the first time was change my "home page" to my "home page." And for no real practical reason the practice stuck. I've long kept my bookmarks organized in dropdown menus off my toolbar (I'm now on Safari as my main browser so I've got a search field right there) and that's the way I like them.

    Now that I'm aware
  • I tend to browse with lots of tabs. I want tabs to open quickly. Nothing loads faster than about:blank [about]. If I want to visit a site often, I'll make a bookmark.
  • Consisting of headlines taken from google news, and slashdot, as well as a few comic strips and forms to search several places.
  • Snarg.net [snarg.net] Instead of being hammered with info overload right off the bat, Snarg offers a gradual way to get into right frame of mind - problem is, I sometimes forget why I fired up the browser in the 1st place.

  • It's supposed to be about:blank (Score:3, Funny)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @11:49PM (#8652642) Homepage Journal
    But some piece of spywhere keeps changing it to http://allaboutsearching.com/passthrough/index.htm l?http://about:blank. And yes, I've run ad-aware, HijackThis, CWShredder, and SpyBot S&D. This puppy seems to have a mutating signature, so it's not in the databases. At least spybot is able to keep it from downloading any more spyware, something it keeps trying to do. And Spybot also manages to prevent it from doing any popups, so life is tolerable. I just wish I could figure where this software is. Maddening (and scary) that it can hide so thoroughly.

    Yes, I know about Mozilla. Still too slow (even Firefox) and the XUL version of the Google toolbar has serious problems.

    If you were about to tell me to switch to Linux, you really need to get a life.

    But I digress. Why about:blank? Because there's absolute no web page I want to see every time I open a new browser window. Something I do 100 times a day. That's not hype -- 100 is a conservative estimate!

    • Read this thread:

      http://computercops.us/modules.php?name=Forums&f il e=viewtopic&p=107985

      Might help get rid of the bugger.
    • Have you tried searching for that domain in RegEdit? Could be tucked away in an obscure reg key.

      One half-solution would be to but a bogus entry for that domain in your c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file (point it to Google's IP address, or to 127.0.0.1 and run a tiny http server [ritlabs.com] with a blank page, or something), so the browser wouldn't actually get to that site.

      Or the usual solution for fixing chronic Windows problems: reinstall the OS. ;)

      • Yep, first thing I tried. This isn't an allboutsearching trojan (they have their own), it's a generic trojan that downloads other peoples spyware. Allaboutsearching is always first on the list of stuff that comes back after I clean it out, but there are others. Doesn't leave any tracks in the registry, that I can detect.

        One of the other adwares it downloaded did something I was able to detect this way. It used random names for its components (like the search bar it wanted me to use instead of Googlebar) s

  • Last viewed set of tabs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by driptray ( 187357 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @11:50PM (#8652644)

    I like to pick up where I left off, so my start page is the set of tabs I was viewing when I last shut down the browser.

    Using the Multizilla extension in Mozilla.

  • local page with a link to /. and CyBear [cybear.net]
  • At home, it's my current search engine of choice: Google. this might change since I'm now using the Google Toolbar.

    It used to be Excite and then Internet Movie Database (which I keep on a quick link button along with Slashdot, Fark, Dictionary.com).

    The browsers I use on my FreeBSD box start with a blank page since I usually run them remotely (headless machine) and I don't want to waste time waiting for them.

    At work, a custom made page with frames to our trouble ticket system as well as a couple of monit

  • jumpfile.html (Score:4, Interesting)

    by andfarm ( 534655 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @11:57PM (#8652715)
    I use a custom jumpfile I've put together over the last year or two which contains all the links I commonly visit up at the top, a Google search box (of course!) and login fields for a few sites like Slashdot.

    For example, here's what I've got for Slashdot:

    <form action=http://slashdot.org/users.pl method=get>
    <i>Slashdot</i>
    <inpu t type=hidden name=op value=userlogin>
    <input type=hidden name=unickname value=andfarm>
    <input type=hidden name=returnto value=http://slashdot.org/>
    <input type=hidden name=userlogin value=Login>
    <input type=password name=upasswd size=8>
    </form>

    (excuse the space in the first <input>; it's Slashdot's, not mine.)

  • "Conquer your Desktop!" you insensitive clod!

  • MyWay (Score:5, Informative)

    by ziggles ( 246540 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @12:10AM (#8652803) Homepage
    http://my.myway.com/

    Basically a portal like yahoo, but more customizable. And their whole purpose is to run a site with no ads and no popups so that's a nice bonus.
    • Unless they have a billionaire owner, the ads will come.
      • Perhaps my description was slightly inaccurate. They do have text ads on some pages. But they're usually out of the way, so much so that I forgot they were even there. According to them they've been profitable since they started.

  • STATUS (Score:4, Funny)

    by Gropo ( 445879 ) <groopo@yah o o .com> on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @12:26AM (#8652916) Homepage Journal
    My Linksys WET_11 Status page to tell me wether or not my leeched WiFi access is active :P
  • It's been www.yahoo.com since Netscape 1.1N.

    Anything else doesn't look right in the browser.

    I don't actually use Yahoo for anything, but it's what Browsers Are Supposed To Have At Startup.

  • I set my browser home page to my bookmark page on my wiki server. It's somewhat combersome to add links to it, but I can use from any browser, and best of all, I can edit it from any browser.

  • Yup... DrudgeReport.com [drudgereport.com] is a fairly good indicator of the general most-breaking news story of the moment, which is a good way to roll out of bed and start my morning.

    I'm damn sure that it's the start page of at least a third of DC.

    Then, it's off to work where my start page is Google, even though there's an Intranet page I probably should be using instead.

    Slashdot loads too slowly for a start page when I'm opening new windows. I used to keep it at Yahoo.com when I'd set up other people's computers because
  • I love my start page. It's got a pretty picture of a feather, and says Seeing this instead of the website you expected? See for yourself: http://localhost/ [localhost].

  • blank (Score:2)

    by myov ( 177946 )
    Why load a page if I'm going to ignore it anyways?
    I'm either using google (in my toolbar), or I know where I'm going.

    my RSS reader takes care of the news now, so I don't have a need for my yahoo anymore. Although, I still prefer its format over the email style window.

  • Another vote for Google.com (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MachDelta ( 704883 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @02:04AM (#8653422)
    Why? Two reasons.

    One, google is simple and on a screamin fast pipe. If google doesn't load when I open my browser, I know my network or ISP is broken.
    Secondly, each time I open a new window, its set to load my homepage (google). So all I need to do is gesture up (All-in-one Gestures extension) to open a new window, and bam: I'm ready to search da intarnet. With gestures, its even faster than having google in the menu bar (which I don't really like anyways). You don't have to click on anything, since the cursor defaults to googles search line... so a quick flick of the wrist upwards, anywhere on the screen, and i'm in business. Its wonderful.

    That random wikipedia link is pretty cool though... maybe i'll add a second homepage to Firefox here...
  • Mine's got nekkid people all over. Really though it's just a big dynamic page that gathers a wealth of information about the various paysites I operate. How big will my commission check be this month ? blue box 3rd cell from the top. What's the trend for new memberships per day ? Graph in the bottom left corner.

    Oh, and I have a google strip that hovers over all that, because y'know, you always need to google something.
  • I have ESPN.com as my start page. In a way, it is to sports fans what Slashdot is to geeks.
  • Mine is a semi-local page. I live in a university dorm of sorts [rwth-aachen.de], and every one of the about 400 computers this site of our central switch can be considered semi-local: Connection speeds of 95 MBit/s, for real. Now, there happens to exist a traffic limit: We are only allowed 3 Gigs of internet traffic per month. The bean counter that ensures this is an old K6 called "KGB". It also shows off some nifty stats how traffic has developed over the last day, week, month, year. As such, its an important page which c
  • At work, I use the city I am working in. At home, I use the city I am at. I like viewing the weather information. My father uses news.google.com. :)
  • This page [northarc.com] is my start page, and is pretty much generated by one of seven shell scripts depending on what day it is at 05:00 EST. Simple HTML to load a series of links and that's it, so I can go read my comics in peace.
  • with lots of hidden functionality.
    blanketfort.com - exit/home [blanketfort.com]

  • I created a php page that I run on localhost apache server. Here [msu.edu] is a sample of what the page looks like (the actual appointments, names, birthdays, etc have been changed). It allows me to write what I have to do and save it. Also, what I write in the appointment textbox is read in by the calendar part so the dates are underlined and a tooltip tells me what I have to do (needed when the texbox is full since I don't like to delete record of what I've done either).

    I tend to forget to stay organized, so I

  • ... running an Apache 1.3.something, serving a hand-written (S)HTML page containing the most frequently used pages and some CGIs for various stuff, mostly converting POD, man, info and so on; both at home and in the office.

    Tux2000

  • ...though since I almost never close Mozilla, it doesn't really matter. What I really like is having a group of tabs associated with the "Home" bookmark. At the moment, one click opens up: /. [slashdot.org], explodingdog [explodingdog.com], maddox [xmission.com], the LP's homepage [lp.org], wikipedia [wikipedia.org], suprnova [suprnova.org], where's george? [wheresgeorge.com], and google news [google.com]. These are all the pages I view at least daily, so I like having them at my fingertips.
  • A customized page like My Yahoo! or My MSN? Personal Web site or local HTML file with your favorite bookmarks?

    come off it, thats for normals

    My home page is the custom script that displays the various status of my servers

    I've got
    • The date of the report
    • pound / dollar exchange rate
    • google adsense totals for the last 7 days
    • tradedoubler comission earned this month
    • 3 bandwidth consumption graphs (daily, monthly, weekly),
    • site hits daily & monthtly unique vistors, page impressions hits & bandwidth
  • I keep Dictionary.com's Word of the Day [reference.com] as my home page. How else would I learn how to mock the ignorant without them knowing it?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Counting down....

    http://www.eclecticpixel.com/bonnaroo/

    (check out http://www.bonnaroo.com)
  • At home, it's /web/tvb/[not-telling].html, a page with links to my regular sites and often-used resources like Google, IMDB, etc. That directory is an alias to one of the virtual hosts my web server, so I can sit down at any machine on the net with a browser, type in toddverbeek.com/[not-telling].html, and be "at home". Granted, it's not especially secure, which is why I'm not divulging the actual filename and I make a habit of purging the URL history when using other people's machines. But it's not like
  • I usually launch my web browser like
    $ lynx .

    If it has to be a graphical one, such as
    this Internet Exploder at work, I prefer
    a blank page, because it loads fastest.
  • Wow, I really missed out on an opportunity to plug a pet site of mine... but I'll try anyway. It's called Yavista [yavista.com].

  • I never shut down my browser, you insensitive clod!

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