Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Multiple Homepages with Firefox

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Multiple Homepages with Firefox

Posted 2006-05-22 09:29 PM in Musings | Tools.

A little trick that I like to use when I install Firefox on a family member's computer is having multiple homepages.
In FireFox from Tools|Options|General, enter in the homepages you want, separated by pipes "|".

This will make the day of spouses, parents, great uncles and cousins who only visit three or four sites a day. Rather than trying to teach them the wonders of RSS, just show them how tabbed browsing works and send them on their merry way.

The WAF on this tip is high.

Tracked by:
"Multiple homepages on Firefox" (Paul's Imaginary Friend) [Trackback]
"Multiple homepages on Firefox" (Paul's Imaginary Friend) [Trackback]
"Mulitple Tabs/Home pages in FireFox" (QA Insight: Software QA blog) [Trackback]

Monday, May 22, 2006 9:27:03 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

So is that popup image feature now a part of dasBlog? Or was that a one-off thing you decided to try for this post? :)

It's pretty spiffy, I'll grant you that. I've seen it elsewhere and toyed around with implementing it in a UserScript I'm writing for the CodeProject (http://www.codeproject.com) forums, but I've yet to see it in a blog like that.

David Stone

Tuesday, May 23, 2006 7:42:45 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Nice tip! I always wondered if there was a way to open multiple tabs on startup. Thanks!

Mark

Tuesday, May 23, 2006 7:55:40 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I set up my wife with multiple tabs and it took her a while to understand that there are tabs up there.

Unfortunately she likes playing games on MSN so she is constantly still firing up IE.

I am thinking about getting a divorce if she doesn't fully switch....j/k.

Ralph Whitbeck

Tuesday, May 23, 2006 12:47:52 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

You can also do this by opening existing tabs with the pages you want and then clicking the Use Current Pages button in Tools|Options|General.

At any rate, many people set Google as their homepage because it's really snappy when opening FireFox. Doesn't loading multiple slow pages in tabs such as cnn.com and msn.com defeats that purpose?

Alan le

Wednesday, May 24, 2006 4:35:10 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Ralph, there's a Firefox extension that uses IE's rendering engine (so you can load Microsoft-only sites):

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1419/

Gary C

Thursday, May 25, 2006 11:17:42 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

The recent beta 2 release of IE7 now supports this concept...giving you the option to "Add this page to your home page tabs." A very nice feature indeed.