Start Pages

When you first click on your browser your default home page (also known as a start page) is displayed. This is also displayed if you press the Home button on your browse toolbar.

You can change this to be anything that you want, and it's quite useful to do so. How do you change the home page? Well, begin by surfing to the page you like. For example, I prefer excite.com as my start page. Once you have found a good page (and remember it's easy to change again later so don't worry about it) select "Internet Options" from the "Tools" menu (this assumes you use a recent version of Internet Explorer).

This will show a box similar to the one above. On the area marked "Home page", click the "Use Current" button. This will set the start page to the current web page.

For Netscape, the procedure is similar. Simply surf to the page you want, then choose "Preferences" from the "Edit" menu. Click the "Use Current Page" button, as shown in the example below.

There are many places on the web which provide excellent start pages to help your surfing. Some of the things that I look for in a good start page include:

It includes the information that I want to see when I first open up my browser. This generally means I want to see some headlines, a list of commonly used links and a good search function. I am primarily interested in the headlines, so a site which maintains an active, frequently changing news list is important to me.
The start page must load quickly. This means it must have very few images.
I want a very customizable start page. A site such as MSN, Excite or Yahoo is perfect, as these can be changed dramatically with a few clicks.

On the other hand, if you don't care about any of this, you could just set your own web site's home page as your start page. For those who can edit HTML code, you could create a special page on your own web site which is customized to include exactly what you want. This is more work, but it will give you the precise information you need at your fingertips.

Some of the portals that have good start page capabilities include the following.