By Rick Broida
Click to viewWhere do you call home? I don't mean the city you live in; I mean the page that pops up when you start your browser. It's not easy these days to decide where to hang your web hat, to elect a single page as your jumping-off point.
In other words, where to "start"? Lately I've been shopping for the perfect page, a place that serves up news, feeds, e-mail, gadgets, search engines and other everyday weborabilia, all of it customized to my liking. I put five "home" heavyweights to the test: Google, Netvibes, Pageflakes, Windows Live and Yahoo. Which one rocks hardest? You may be surprised.
Owning multiple homes
Of course, there's no law that says you have to limit yourself to a single home page. Firefox and Internet Explorer, for instance, let you designate multiple tabs to appear each time you start the browser, so you could put, say, your feed reader in one, Lifehacker in another, Consumerist in a third (sorry for all the nepotism) and so on.
Even so, there's much to be said for one page that gathers everything together, that gives you what you want at-a-glance. I'll wager that even if you do rely on a multi-page startup, you could benefit from one of these information-aggregating sites.
In evaluating them, I looked at elements such as appearance, customization and content, with a sharp eye on ease of use (if I can't find what I need inside of a few seconds, forget it). For my money, the ideal start page should support limitless tabs and columns, your choice of colors and backgrounds, and whatever content you care to add (news, gadgets, feeds, etc.). Not one of the five matched my ideal, but some came a lot closer than others. Here's the scoop on each.
For the longest time, Google Homepage (click the thumbnail for a full-size image) was all function, no form. Sure, it let you add countless cool gadgets, arrange them to your liking with drag-and-drop simplicity, and, of course, search Google. But the stark white façade and total lack of visual customization were turn-offs. As a result, I was all set to give it low marks.
Then came last week's addition of themes, and suddenly Google is a much more inviting place to call home. It still doesn't give you nearly enough control over its appearance, but its other assets—including hundreds of modules, some of which provide direct access to other Google services (like Docs & Spreadsheets)—make this a definite contender.
On the downside, browsing the available modules can be a bit tedious, as they're not organized in any meaningful way. What's more, you don't get news-item summaries just by mousing over them, as you do with most of the other services; Google requires you to click a plus sign to expand an entry, then click it again to close it.
If you're not hung up on looks, Google makes for a fine start page. Here's hoping it gets prettier with time.
Rick's Rating: B
Netvibes
A perennial favorite, Netvibes (click the thumbnail for a full-size image) scores with its effortless customization, mammoth collection of feeds and modules, and all-around good looks.
To speed and simplify page setup, Netvibes provides a sidebar (which you can hide, of course) listing a couple dozen popular modules and a collapsible directory of feeds. Drag, drop, rearrange and you're good to go. Naturally, you can also search the site's thousands of cataloged modules, feeds, podcasts, events and user-built tabs (any tab can be published to the Netvibes directory). A recent update added the option to share your own tabs via e-mail, instant message or code embedded in a personal page like MySpace.
Netvibes offers a choice of 10 themes, though they're really just different colors for the page and module headers. You can also adorn each tab with any of a hundred cute little icons, or import one of your own.
Though I do wish for more color-customization options, Netvibes gets just about everything right. It's the page I want to see first when I fire up my browser.
Rick's Rating: A
Pageflakes
Pageflakes (click the thumbnail for a full-size image) bears more than a passing resemblance to Netvibes. Indeed, on first inspection the two appear separated at birth. Dig a little deeper, however, and Pageflakes emerges as the weaker of the two, though it's definitely not without its charms.
One of them is its fast, friendly introduction: Without so much as registering, you can build a custom page and rearrange the content (everything's drag-and-droppable, of course). Another is tab sharing: You can make any page public (it gets its own URL), invite others to edit the page, add tags and so on.
Like Netvibes, Pageflakes offers up popular feeds and modules (called "flakes," natch) for you to quickly add to your pages, though curiously they can't be dragged and dropped—they're click-to-add items. I didn't love the e-mail module, which limits you to Gmail, POP accounts and a bunch of unrecognizable (to me, at least) foreign e-mail services. Netvibes, by comparison, makes it a cinch to get AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and the like.
Furthermore, a few areas of Pageflakes are a bit unintuitive, like having to click "Share" on a tab to access its layout settings. Window dressing is limited to a choice of six colors for the page header. You could do a lot worse than making Pageflakes your start page, but you can do better with Netvibes.
Rick's Rating: B-
Windows Live
Did Microsoft pull the plug on My MSN and nobody noticed? I certainly didn't get the memo. That's a shame, as MSN had more eye candy than a Pussycat Dolls concert; it was ideal for people like me who like pretty graphics. But now it's just a broken mess: You can't add RSS feeds, and it seems to forget your custom layout settings from one session to the next.
Apparently, Microsoft's start-page eggs now reside in Windows Live's basket—and a homely basket it is (click the thumbnail for a full-size image). This decidedly Google-like site covers all the basics—tabs, modules, etc.—but there's absolutely nothing compelling about it, no hook to draw users in or keep them around. The gadget selection is downright anemic compared with Google's, and although you can choose from five different page-header colors (one of which is white), Live somehow manages to look even more stark and uninviting than Google used to.
There are a few pluses. Live makes it easy to add tabs, rearrange modules and sift through the available content. Mousing over a "more" link beside a news item pops up a summary window where you can read, share or even blog (via Windows Live Spaces) the full story. You can share pages (dubbed "collections") via e-mail or publish them in the Windows Live directory. There's even a "Send to Mobile" option, though this is woefully unclear: It sends "all of your customized content from Live.com" to your phone. Huh? That could be a lot more text messages than you want to receive. Might want to pass on that.
Ultimately, you deserve a better start than this. Microsoft Live isn't quite dead on arrival, but its pulse is weak.
Rick's Rating: C-
My Yahoo
Yahoo (technically, My Yahoo) has come a long way since its links-only days—but not far enough (click the thumbnail for a full-size image). Although you can add loads of custom content (modules, feeds, podcasts, etc.), you're severely limited in how you can arrange it all. It's a decidedly Web 1.0 start page.
If you like news, you'll appreciate Yahoo's option to display a short summary below each headline—something none of the other start pages can do (most require either a click or a mouse gesture). Granted, this consumes screen estate rather quickly, but it's definitely the preferred way to peruse news.
Speaking of screen estate, Yahoo's huge header area (home to a big banner ad) consumes a full quarter of the page—not the most practical use of space. The bigger problem is with organization: Yahoo limits you to three non-resizable columns: two narrow and one wide. You can rearrange modules within individual columns, but not across them. Actually, you can drag modules from one narrow column to another, but the wide one seems locked for some reason: You can't drag anything into or out of it. And when I added new content, it would only go to the wide column.
Yahoo offers dozens of different themes, far more than any other start page. Most of them do little more than change text and/or header colors, but a few add textured or image backgrounds. Unfortunately, that's not nearly enough to make Yahoo a contender. Somebody order this site a bottle of AJAX!
Rick's Rating: D
What's your start page? Google Reader? Your own site? Lifehacker? Nothing at all? Tell the world where your browser begins, and why, in the comments.
Rick Broida, Lifehacker associate editor, called Excite home for many years, but recently relocated to Netvibes. His special feature, Alpha Geek, appears every Monday. Subscribe to the Alpha Geek feed to get new installments in your newsreader.