OT: What is the point of a start/home page (was: bling bing blingetty bing)

[Tim Streater]

Can anyone explain what the point of one of these is? For the user, I mean, not the OS provider or other advertiser. You have to wait for the home page to be loaded and then you promptly go elsewhere.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Put elsewhere in as your home page, then.

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

I use google's advanced search page:

as my browser home page. It is a page I use often (I don't see the point of browser search toolbars etc) and it provides me with a simple check that the online connection is actually working properly.

[Adrian C]

A lot of my searches start at google.co.uk, and it's good to have something simple like that there [1] so ye can see your internet connection is actually working, and be enlightened by their daily choice of doodle.

Meanwhile some people will set their default web page to facebook.com and never actually see the rest of the internet....

Or have a look at the news headlines, their dogs horoscope, Dilbert, deals at Lidl/Aldi, the crashing stocks ...

[1] - however, I could easily set google as a search provider instead and type things to the right of the address bar [2] [2] which I hate for being over there, as invariably it's the one place where folks I'm helping over the phone type and then complain they can't see it...

[JimK]

/[1] - however, I could easily set google as a search provider instead and type things to the right of the address bar [2] /q

What's this on? Can't you just type your search terms into the address bar?

Jim K

[Martin Brown]

You could make your own local home page that has direct links to the places you visit most frequently or any news feeds you like. The other easy option is point it at a quick to load search engine (eg. Google).

You don't have to point it at a MickeySoft sponsored site and suffer the glacially slow loading of bloated Flash adverts all the time.

[Jabba]

Tim Streater scribbled...

Most people don't know any better and stick to whatever their ISP points them to or get stuck with if they're allow new programs to change their homepage.

Some years ago I came across someone who had 3 or 4 different search bars on their browser. I seem to remember her viewing the Interweb through a narrow slot. When I cleaned them off, I was accused of removing her AVP, when I got rid of the AVG search bar.

I like a pretty much blank page

[Tim Streater]

I have a small number of tabs permanently open for such things. For searching with giggle I just type into the address bar.

[Tim Streater]

That's already set as Safari's default search engine. So I don't need to load it, just type into the address bar.

I have (almost) no reason *ever* to go to a MickeySoft site.

[Tim Streater]

AVP?

I just set mine to "New windows and tabs: empty page" which gets me quickest to the point where I can start to do some work.

[Richard]

Opera Speed Dial is where my browser opens.

[Jabba]

Tim Streater scribbled...

anti virus prog - and don't bother with the linux doesn't need one of them.

[Huge]

Just a teeny tiny bit of context would have been nice ...

[Nightjar]

Precisely. My home page is the welcome page for my web site, which has no adverts and was deliberately designed to load quickly.

[Tim Streater]

I've seen people viewing their Word docs through a similar narrow slot

- with most of the window containing Word toolbars.

[Tim Streater]

In article ,

[Jabba]

"Nightjar scribbled...

I've seen personal homepages with live links to the news & weather, and the old favourite - automatically loading background music. The best attempted to load about a dozen different fancy fonts, none of which I had installed. The owner thought the pretty fonts he'd searched all over for could be seen by everyone who used his site.

Personal websites are pretty rare now, why's that ?

[John Williamson]

'Cos everyone's on Tw@tter, Farcebook or one of the other social media sites, so they don't need a web page, which takes thought to maintain.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Or put a sodding great blank instead..

that loads...very quickly!

[The Natural Philosopher]