I’ve never understood that, personally. When I open a new browser window it’s because I want to go to some specific site not because I want to see the same page every time I open the window. And I certainly don’t want to deal with something to load while I’m trying to enter the url of the site I’m actually trying to visit.
Now, let me clarify. What I’m talking about is a page that always loads when you launch your browser and/or open a new window. I actually have a url set in the “home page” line, but my default is to load “about:blank” or whatever. If I want to visit the “home page” I have to go to all the effort to click the little house icon.
I mean, sure. I can see that when you first start your computer up for any given allotment of time you might want to check your web-based email first thing. Or check a news site. Ok. But then do you need to see it every time you re-launch your browser/open a new window etc? All day long?
It seems like most people I talk to have some site set up as the default, though, and that would just drive me batty. I don’t get it at all. Am I just the freak here? Am I missing out on some transcendental experience by not loading the same website every time I open a browser, regardless of where it is I want to go?
I pick you first for my kickball team.
(me too, btw. In addition to turning off the “hide extensions for known file types” option. That’s another irritating default. Especially since as an artist I often save files with the same name in several different formats, and so without the extension they’d be indistinguishable. How anyone can use a computer with file extensions turned off is a mystery to me.)
(By the way, what is it with IE? “Oh you want a new window? Clearly you must want to see a second copy of what you’re already looking at in this window!” what the hell kind of logic is that? The number of times I’ve wanted to open a new window identical to the one I’m already in could probably be counted on one extremity’s worth of digits.)
I have the Beeb pop up, just b/c I’m curious about what articles are on the front page. However, it loads less quickly than I can hit ctrl+T, so I’m already typing my intended destination on a new tab while I wait.
Plus, I lurve me some speed dial. Not so relevant-- just wanted to share.
Well, the browser needs to open to something so it might as well be whatever you use most often. For me it’s the hotmail login page. When I open subsequent pages (and if I’m in some all-fired hurry), I’ll hit Stop as soon as I open the new window and go from there. Or, I have a couple of shortcut keys on my keyboard that I can press if applicable. I don’t see how a blank page is any easier?
Your pet peeve isn’t really the kind of thing that easily annoys me, though.
Well, you can always judge/guess from the icons. :rolleyes:
I have mine set to Google, because about half the time I open a browser I’m searching for something. It’s about half a second faster than typing it in.
I just wish there was a way to selectively erase stuff from the history. I visit the same sites everyday and I hate wading through the stuff that I visited once.
I do occasionally need it. Example: I want to back out of where I am to go to a different area of the same website (compare 2 eBay offerings, f’rinstance).
Ctrl+N, new page. Backspace jumps me up one level, or alt+D gets me ready to type the address…
I rarely launch my browser, because it’s always running. When I do have to restart it, it just comes up with the pages I had open last time. If I open a new tab, it’s blank. So I’m not sure what the default home page is.
Well, for one thing, most of the folks I support would not know a file extension if it bit 'em. I have people who operate entirely in the Word or Excel “Open” dialog box (“Where are my Excel files? Oh, I’m in Word”). One guy takes the cake. He keeps every file he’s ever created-- well over 5000-- on his deskop, and saves or opens exclusively through the dialog boxes.
Renaming files (F2) is a pain with extensions turned on, as it highlights the entire filename. That’s one of the few things Vista got right-- only the filename itself is highlighted, not the extension.
My main one (opera) has whatever I was last looking at. Both IE and Firefox have three websites that I go to regularly that don’t work very well in Opera, so the only time I open either IE or Firefox is to go to one of those sites.
The thing that annoys me about IE is that you can’t type a new url into the first page while it is loading, or you can but once you’ve written half the url IE will steel it back and put the home page url in, very annoying.
Gee, I thought I was normal, but from the previous replies…
First, I rarely start my browser (Firefox) because it’s always running.
When I do start it up, it automatically opens 5 tabs: Yahoo, Google News, Yahoo Mail, the Straight Dope Message Board, and the regular Straight Dope site.
I used to have it open a weather page, a stock quote page, and various others but I’ve quit having those opened.
Surely I’m not the only one who has it open many pages at once?
Yes, Google.
But, since I never shut my browser, and never reboot my machine (it sleeps most of the time, like my cat), I don’t open new pages all that often.
Anyway, I’d just posted to GQ trying to keep FF updates from resetting the default action of new tabs to a blank page. While I don’t get having a home page set to somewhere on the Internet (for reasons above), I love my simple, local home page.
I first put it together years ago, 'round the turn of the century. I just created a simple table in Word, added a few links, and it evolved from there.
It’s plain text, no frills organized collection of links. Yes, there is a whole bar at the top of my screen, but a quick load to an organized, large canvassed page is a lot quicker (for me) method of accessing certain pages. Down on the lower half I have a set of most-used resources. In another section I have entertainment references (e.g., IMDB). Another section has technical needs (e.g., the router, the server). Select news sites are along another pane—I think you get the picture. It’s more limited than my bookmarks, but much more expansive than the bookmarks toolbar. Given the screen size, I hope you can tell how the balance works out.
It’s low-impact on the eye (plain text on a white background), so if I’m loading a new tab to go somewhere else, it’s not distracting. Crucial is that it’s stored locally, so it loads independently of the Internet or router’s status.
So, yeah, have fun playing kickball. I’ll be over here looking at neat bugs.
The first tab that opens in Firefox is my personalized iGoogle page. Subsequent tabs open blank, as Og intended. IE sucks sweaty donkey balls and I never use it unless for some reason I have to go to the MicroSlave update page–which I have actually fooled a couple of times by visiting using the IE Rendering add-on.
