Show HN: I solved my New Tab page

This is what iGoogle used to be! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGoogle You could add your own RSS feed, weather, etc and it used to be awesome. Used to be my "home" tab for many years, before google decided to do away with it.

It appears there's a "replacement" now. https://igoogleportal.com/

Definitely going to try this one out

ghostly_s · 3 years ago

> It appears there's a "replacement" now. https://igoogleportal.com/Very non-obvious that this is not affiliated with Google, I'd think twice about giving it your credentials. Honestly surprised it hasn't been C&D'd based on the URL alone.

OJFord · 3 years ago

Seriously? I'd say from the domain alone it's clearly nothing to do with Google. (I mean, not to my mother, but here.) Clicking through it looks nothing like a Google page or logo etc. - and I don't even use them (except YouTube and rather de-Googled Android) so I'm not that familiar.

tempestn · 3 years ago

That was my homepage for many years too. The most prominent feature was a running sticky note. Don't really miss it anymore though; I've gotten used to using pinned tabs and bookmarks for anything I need access to regularly. (And a more fleshed-out note taking system.)

mattwad · 3 years ago

I never recovered news-wise from losing iGoogle, I'll check this out thanks.

Impressively fast! I love the bonsai. Way too much distractions for me though. Shameless plug: I made a new tab page that's just markdown notes and bookmarks - https://nutab.co

sph · 3 years ago

I love this. This is exactly what I was looking for.

But please, make it open source or announce your monetization plans. Freeware extensions tend to be acquired by the worst companies or bundle malware eventually. If you say you have no plans and intend to keep your word, I shall make an open-source version myself.

But don't let this rant detract from the main point: I love this a lot. If it were somehow synced with Firefox sync, I'd gladly throw even more money (donation, one time purchase) your way.

tmvst · 3 years ago

Thank you! First and foremost, I made nuTab for myself. I wanted a minimal, private notepad as my new tab page. I really don't want to sell it or make it invasive in any way.

Also, no monetization plans yet, but if they come, I'll make sure they're not breaking the original promise of privacy and simplicity.

Firefox sync would be nice, although I would make it optional.

mosselman · 3 years ago

That looks very nice! How is the data saved?

Could I set something up where I can edit it both in the browser and my editor or something?

tmvst · 3 years ago

Thanks! Everything is saved in the extension's local storage. Nothing leaves the browser. You can export editor content from the settings (three dots in the bottom left corner). That creates a .md file with your notes that you can probably import to any editor.

mritchie712 · 3 years ago

same on distractions. if I have good intentions opening a new tab (e.g. I'm going to open GCP logging to debug something), I don't want a random story from HN pulling me in.

msravi · 3 years ago

jlukic · 3 years ago

I also run a customizable start page http://myfav.es

its cost $100/month for 10 years to run but i keep it up because a lot of schools use it to help set up their shared computers and i couldn’t ever have the heart to shut it down.

Once you set it up you can also run it entirely offline using app manifests from myfav.es/fast if you don’t like the idea of your new tab experience being slowed down by web requests.

Why so expensive?

fazfq · 3 years ago

Certainly not because of maintenance costs since he's still running PHP 5.5

oars · 3 years ago

A software engineer who makes $100,000 a year, working 40 hours a week, for 52 weeks, makes about $50/hour.

If this person is spending 2 hours of their time each month maintaining this website (which they gain nothing out of) that's $100/month.

easrng · 3 years ago

Do browsers even support app manifests anymore? I thought they'd abandoned them in favor of service workers.

Is this not the exact same feature-set the browser's built-in 'start pages' already provide?

Deleted Comment

robofanatic · 3 years ago

how much do you make out of it?

andirk · 3 years ago

All: please consider telling your competitors about Animated Tabs [0] as to slow down their productivity per new tab.

[0] http://animatedtabs.com/

mnsh · 3 years ago

I have been using https://tabliss.io/ for a while now. Yours seem cool, but I personally don't like too much information on my start page.

Only reason I use tabliss is to see random Unsplash image on every new tab.

xypage · 3 years ago

tabliss is great, you can pull up your github contribution calendar (without needing to sign in to github), show the weather, and add links that you can open with the number keys which is convenient and saves a solid quarter second of typing every time I open a new tab, which is fun.

vladstudio · 3 years ago

Looks good! The design is, hm, very opinionated, but well done.

Shameless plug - last year, I solve my New Tab page too :-) And it shares a lot of ideas with yours - https://new-tab.vlad.studio/

akuji1993 · 3 years ago

One small thing: You let me preview the cool bookshelf wallpaper, but then I can't click on it to immediately get that one. I scrolled through the first two pages of wallpapers, not able to find it. Would be a cool addition to just be able to click the wallpaper that is currently on preview at the top.

That's a very valid report, thanks! I'll look into adding a search option to the wallpaper picker. This particular picture is called Library and is quite old :-)

lvturner · 3 years ago

This is wonderful -- only thing missing is a bookmarks tile!

Edit: Just saw the readme, maybe I should attempt to add my own!

allig256 · 3 years ago

Oh mate there's tens of tiles I can think of that I still want to add in, just off the top of my head:

- Emails - Quotes of the day - Bookmarks - RSS Feeds - Countdown clocks - GitHub stats

That's what I can rattle off in about 10 seconds of thinking, there's so many things that could be done. At some point you have to just call it a day.

dislikedtom2 · 3 years ago

RSS would be awesome

emptyparadise · 3 years ago

about:blank gang here

personally i'd love to get a widget layer like the old mac dashboard or the windows 8 start menu. miss those a lot, but never really wanted to put those widgets in my browser...

lycos · 3 years ago

I'm in the about:blank gang too, and I hate that in Safari on iOS you can no longer have a blank tab since a few versions. You can hide all the things on the "start page" but then you will still see the edit button.

jraph · 3 years ago

Firefox displays a search bar, but yes, an empty new tab is good. The awesome bar is what I use to access the thing I intent to access when I press CTRL+T, whether it's an history search, or a web search, or an URL. The fewer things displayed on my screen trying to distract me, the better :-)

aasasd · 3 years ago

I like me some widgets, but pretty much the only time I see the bare desktop is when the machine restarts. So instead I put some in the menu bar (Mac's ‘tray’), in the dock and in the bottom corners around the dock. I'm using open-source ‘Stats’ for the menu; there's also BitBar iirc. The stock Activity Manager for the dock, and custom scripts in Hammerspoon for drawing anywhere on the screen, namely in the corners.