Ask HN: What is your Home Page in your browser? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is your Home Page in your browser?

13 pointsknown65 comments

Just curious to know if it is not private

I use Google now, but I used to use a custom-made start page. It had:

  * an auto-focus search bar linked to Google
  * a bunch of links to my most-visited sites
  * the current snapshot from one of my university's webcams
    (which will auto-refresh if you hovered your mouse on it)
  * a little area for a note to myself that I could edit with a password

You can see the page at http://mrzwolinski.com/start/ if you're curious.

"Reopen last session".

I used to have firefox open with tens of tabs, now I make it a point to keep it at 6. If I open anything I make sure to read it right then and there, or make a judgment call to pass; if it's something I will need later I look at the title and abstract out some googleable keywords. Lately, Searchyc has replaced google for me for research!

I also try to keep active work and research on two separate browsers. I have an instance of Opera open to API documentation and stuff I need to get work done. Firefox is for business and keeping a look on industry.

I use Sage, the FF feed-reader plugin and I monitor business news; no tech, no programming, no blogs, just business announcements, mergers and acquisitions and stuff related to my work. Whenever I start to lose focus, I take a few hours off to read that and I am inspired immediately. I am in advertising, focused on a specific geographic region, so any business initiative there, new project or whatever is just perfect news :-)

This.

I use Chrome and Firefox. I keep work related sites in Firefox, and personal sites in Chrome.

I'll often open tabs of interesting things in Chrome to read when I lose focus at work, or need a break. Sometimes I can have up to 30 tabs of crap, at which point I need to decide which ones I'll actually read, and which one's I think I'll read, then close all but the ones I know I'll actually read.

If I have to read a lot of interrelated articles or am doing personal research, I'll pull a Chrome tab out and keep it as a separate window.

The thing I love about Chrome is that with the "restore pages that were last open" option is that it opens all tabs in all windows, not just the main window, and if for some reason it doesn't reopen all the tabs, it has a list of recently closed tab groups you can open with a single click.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

When I have time and it's not a stub, or if I just want something to do, I read some of the article. A few times it's been interesting.

Hacker News.

Why delay the inevitable?

Google Chrome's start page. (my top 8 visited websites)

Seconded. In all likelihood, when I'm open my browser I'm going to one of these 8 so this just makes sense for me.

about:blank

firefox with tabkit and when I open a new window it is likely I am starting a new thread of thought

^n new window with focus in url bar no time for loading or change of focus I want to get started

readline style emacs bindings for editing in the url is a must for me

a good set of quick searches helps

  - g http://google.com/search?q=%s
  - gau http://google.com.au/search?hl=en&meta=cr%3DcountryAU&q=%s
  - wp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s
  - shn http://searchyc.com/%s
  - etc ...

Using the keyword/quick search feature I find the url bar becomes a kind of command line interface to the internet with a series of 1-3 char commands that can get me where I need to go.

I use a search engine home page for the same reason. Used to be google, now it's bing because I like seeing the picture of the day.

One of the things I hate most about Internet Explorer is when I open a new tab, alt-D to the address bar, and start typing.

Meanwhile, IE is busy doing some of that large amounts of nothing that big programs like to do, and loading the homepage.

When it finishes, it refreshes the address bar all over what I was typing.

When I use about:blank, this doesn't happen.

I set http://www.google.com/ig as my home page, but I set "When Firefox starts" to "Show a blank page". This way I don't get distracted all the time, but I can hit Alt+Home to go to my home page quickly.

The Firefox distinction between start page and home page is one of the coolest things about the browser (maybe other browsers have it too, I've never bothered to check). I have Gmail has my homepage but blank page on startup. Hitting Alt+Home takes practically no time, and I'd rather spend the time myself when I want to then have to pay the time every time I start my browser whether I want to go to my mail or not.

Saves the loading time when on slower connections (i.e. tethering on the go).

Exactly. Blank screen is the best choice -- no distraction.

http://start.io

Totally customisable, good-looking start pages based on a really well-designed CMS. You can make some of your links private and some public.

I didn't make it, I just really like it. One of the guys that did make it works at Tumblr.

http://watrcoolr.us/ -- one of epi0Bauqu's projects. I think the UI is very appealing to those of us who prefer to focus on exactly one thing at a time. And hate clutter. And like to use the keyboard.

Just google.com, plan and simple.

   javascript:(function(){readStyle='style-ebook';readSize='size-medium';readMargin='margin-wide';_readability_script=document.createElement('SCRIPT');_readability_script.type='text/javascript';_readability_script.src='http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/js/readability.js?x='+(Math.random());document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(_readability_script);_readability_css=document.createElement('LINK');_readability_css.rel='stylesheet';_readability_css.href='http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/css/readability.css';_readability_css.type='text/css';_readability_css.media='screen';document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(_readability_css);_readability_print_css=document.createElement('LINK');_readability_print_css.rel='stylesheet';_readability_print_css.href='http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/css/readability-print.css';_readability_print_css.media='print';_readability_print_css.type='text/css';document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(_readability_print_css);})();

That is the readability bookmarklet. It's not helpful for the homepage itself but it gives that "Home"-Button a purpose. This is my workaround because Firefox doesn't support Bookmark-Buttons on the button bar. I can now just hit the "Home" Button on any page and readability will work its magic.

Homepage???? Wait people shut down their browsers? like, ever?

I haven't seen the homepage in months, I think it's still that default "welcome to Ubuntu" page but I really have no clue.

I recommend FF 2.x. You'll be restarting it at a vigorous pace then. But at least the address bar and tabs aren't completely ruined.

I use Firefox and Google Chrome, and I don't remember what the homepage is on either because they open my last open tabs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

localhost + a HEADER.HTML that reads '<h1>Do work!</h1>'

http://www.google.com/ig

I did the random wikipedia link once and ended up getting Ginger Lynn...Not good when at work.

The Firefox "Speed Dial" add-on.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4810

Opera Speed Dial in my case, with links to HN, Google Reader, local traffic information, online banking and some others I rarely use.

http://icewm.sourcearchive.com/documentation/1.2.30/bindkey_...

It's the only accurate documentation I could find of the hotkeys for the ice window manager. I was studying it for a while, getting cool at magically rearranging windows at my whim.

The results page of http://www.whatpeoplearesayingaboutus.com

It's just a bunch of frames in tabs that allow me to see any new references to products/projects I'm involved with. I find it helpful to have product comments in my face every time I start my browser.

The Speed dial page on Opera browser. It has Google reader, Gmail, Facebook and Twitter on it.

A personalized Google home page on my main browser.

On other browsers I use, it is some page I frequently visit in that browser (often because of website-browser compatibility issues, or to experiment with the look of certain pages in different browsers).

A bookmarks page I made at http://toxicpixel.org/pod/jma ... years ago was just a flat html file, now is a rails project I infrequently attempt to update in various ways.

I rarely do a fresh start of firefox, so its immaterial to me what my homepage is.

Google Apps Gmail, Google Apps Calendar, Google Reader, Google Voice, Facebook I rarely click the "home" button but I like having these three up when i start a new browser session.

New windows go to Safari's Top Sites. New tabs go to about:blank.

Wow, thank you so much for that comment. I've been so annoyed with how long it was taking to open a new tab in Safari because of the 3D eye candy top sites thing, but changing it to a blank page has made it infinitely faster.

http://www.google.com/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.m...

My Backpackit.com Inbox. I've been implementing a bit of GTD task management in my life and having this page pop-up first thing (and stay up all day) has been very helpful.

http://runwayapp.com

I find it's quite helpful to have my to-do list be the first thing that pops up at me when I launch a browser.

thanks, this is brilliant, gonna try it and see if it has an effect. (for me it would be google tasks)

http://en.wikipedia.org

Has "Featured article", "In the news", "Did you know...", and "On this day...". It's very awesome.

The most recent page(s) that I visited. I almost never shut down the browser, so it usually has a half dozen tabs with my commonly-visited sites already up.

On Safari, it's TopSites. On Firefox, it's HN (used to be Digg). The only time I ever really hit the home page is when I reboot, which isn't all that often.

I use opera and it has a quick dial with currently 16 sites, including hacker news and several projects I'm working on and forums I'm involved in.

file:///c:/my/scripts/home.htm

c:\my is under Subversion control, allowing me to sync and propagate changes made on any home or work PC which has my setup to all the others (next time I use them). Created this setup (first using CVS) about 10 years ago...

I also have easily accessible Google/Wikipedia/Craigslist/MSDN searches setup in my text editor, which these days get used more than the search-forms in my home page.

It used to be google.com, no login. Now, it's Ubuntu's Google, start.ubuntu.com/version. I've been too busy to change it.

about:mozilla on Firefox, because it makes me laugh. With every new release of Firefox, I enjoy hoping it has changed.

I have been using BackpackIt to set up a PMarca style productivity page with to do lists.

So far it has been pretty successful.

A webpage that tells me the ip address of my router at home. Useful for when I'm out of the country.

blank - clean screen, clean mind :-)

About half a dozen tabs. Google Reader, google.com and a few community sites I frequent.

http://www.quakelive.com

https://mail.google.com

http://www.google.ca/ig

I didn't even know! I had to check. On Chrome, it's google.com.

A blank page.

genius, that's a great idea

A matrix of 12 most visited sites.

get the speedial plugin for firefox. Without hyperbole it will change your life.

Safari: NYT Firefox: Techmeme

Wolframalpha

My Yahoo!

Me too. Been that way for years.

Actually what I typically do when I open Firefox is open a folder called "Morning" and at the bottom select "Open All in Tabs". That way I see everything I care about (HN included).

iGoogle

cnn.com

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