In a Search of a Favorite Start Page

For years, various speed dials or fast dials have been popular among users who wanted to start browsing the internet with something other than the Google search engine.

Trends have changed, along with the browser add-ons people used. Since Chrome became the dominant force on computers, fast dials haven’t evolved enough to fit into society.

A serious problem with fast dials was that their settings were lost after reinstalling the system or browser. While they had export options (if someone remembered in time) or synchronisation (usually paid), you had to set them up again every time.

When I switched to macOS and Safari as my default browser, I really liked Apple’s fast dial solution.

Safari offers the display of tiles, thumbnails of our sites saved in bookmarks. This is good because the bookmarks synchronise with the Apple account, just like with Chrome and a Google account. There’s nothing to set up here and everything looks like a single entity.

As a Chrome user on Windows, I stopped using fast dials that didn’t offer similar functionality and stuck with Incredible StartPage. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it fulfilled the idea of having bookmarks in the cloud, which were then displayed (independently) as a start page after installing the add-on.

However, I kept searching for a solution on Chrome that I liked from Safari, and I finally found it.

Recently, I discovered Favorites - New Tab Page, which uncannily resembles the Safari solution.

It integrates perfectly with our bookmarks and allows us to organise and manage them by dragging icons or using the menu hidden under the right mouse button. We have complete freedom to organise bookmarks into folders and choose which folder should be displayed by default as our fast dial.

Moreover, although it’s not essential, the add-on allows us to specify the icon density and grid layout to maximise space, especially on high-resolution screens.

Finally, something light and functional has been found. You can download Favorites - New Tab Page for your Chrome browser here.

As I like to try new things from time to time, including new browsers, I keep a close eye on the development of Firefox. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a worthy add-on for this browser. And, although Firefox partly supports (or used to support) Chrome add-ons, the above one unfortunately doesn’t work, so I’m still searching. If you know of any solution similar to the above for Firefox, please let me know in the comments.

Best regards.