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View Full Version : Custom Browser Startups?


Phatfiddler
April 17th, 2007, 10:33 PM
After browsing the web for a while, I had an interesting idea. What if, when you open your browser, you are greeted by a desktop-style menu, with you favorite sites displayed as icons with text, which are movable and scalable. You can do a custom background and icons as well. You wouldn't have an application menu, programs or anything like that. It would be mostly for aesthetic purposes.

Has anyone seen or heard of anything like this, such as plugins or extensions? I know someone's going to say just make a custom site and set it as the home page, but I want something that is client-side and is as easy to edit as a standard desktop.
Nonno Bassotto
April 17th, 2007, 10:36 PM
It may be nice to implement a CMS to this aim, so that anyone can easily create its own site and set it as default.
Bloodfen Razormaw
April 17th, 2007, 11:03 PM
You can already do this with your desktop.
Mateo
April 17th, 2007, 11:05 PM
like an Ajax start page? those exist.
Phatfiddler
April 18th, 2007, 02:30 AM
Yes, I know you can have links posted to the desktop, and open browsers from there, but I am saying something that is IN the browser itself. Because it is in the browser, the icons are definitely links to websites. When they are on my desktop, they blend in with everything else and I have to hunt for them. Plus, I have to minimize my browser to get back to the desktop.

Mateo-

An Ajax start page? I know a little about Ajax, but could you just host it locally on your own pc? I'm sure that I could create and HTML, PHP or other type document, save it locally and set it as my homepage, but this requires extensive editing to move the icons around or anything simple.

I'm proposing a browser integration that works similarly to the desktop in that you can freely move objects without having to open an editor.
Hex_Mandos
April 18th, 2007, 03:49 AM
You could make a FF extension written in XUL to do that.
sloggerkhan
April 18th, 2007, 03:54 AM
If all you want is certain pages to open when you open your web browser (not exactly what you are saying, I know...) you could edit the menu command for firefox to be something like:
$firefox www.aaa.com www.bbb.com www.ccc.org
and so on. Then those pages will open every time you launch ff.