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Show HN: I solved my New Tab page

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Re: Show HN: I solved my New Tab page

#121

Post by RedShift1 »

c7b wrote: post #120
RedShift1 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote about about:blank: When I worked in a pc repair shop, when I set up new computers I always configured the browser (back in the day this was IE 6 and older) to start with about:blank because it just starts faster without having to load the MSN website or whatever. At some point my boss told me to stop doing that because customers thought the internet wasn't working.

Well, as a repair worker you're also not really supposed to mess with settings that are frankly purely subjective (yes, about:blank loads faster, but if people want to always go to MSN first, you've just increased the time and friction to get there), and have nothing to do with whatever problem people came to see you about.

I only did it on new pc's that had never been in customer's hands, not existing accounts. If computers came in for repair I didn't touch the settings.

Re: Show HN: I solved my New Tab page

#123

Post by perth »

RedShift1 wrote: post #121
c7b wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as a repair worker you're also not really supposed to mess with settings that are frankly purely subjective (yes, about:blank loads faster, but if people want to always go to MSN first, you've just increased the time and friction to get there), and have nothing to do with whatever problem people came to see you about.

I only did it on new pc's that had never been in customer's hands, not existing accounts. If computers came in for repair I didn't touch the settings.

Yeah that’s reasonable. I’m confused at the kind of customers you guys had though. Even my parents (tech illiterate baby boomers) know enough basic PC knowledge to try to type “www.google.com” into the address bar to determine if they have internet.

Re: Show HN: I solved my New Tab page

#125

Post by karakanb »

This looks very nice, thanks for sharing it. I really like the way the settings pane works, being able to see the change right away instead of the browser.

Since many people have shared theirs, I have also built a new-tab extension for a few years ago, it displays Hacker News, Product Hunt, GitHub Trending and a few more platforms on the grid, I have ~2k people using it: https://github.com/karakanb/devo

I will experiment with this settings design to incorporate sth similar in Devo, thanks for the inspiration!

Re: Show HN: I solved my New Tab page

#126

Post by joshmanders »

perth wrote: post #123
RedShift1 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only did it on new pc's that had never been in customer's hands, not existing accounts. If computers came in for repair I didn't touch the settings.

Yeah that’s reasonable. I’m confused at the kind of customers you guys had though. Even my parents (tech illiterate baby boomers) know enough basic PC knowledge to try to type “www.google.com” into the address bar to determine if they have internet.

Can't speak for those customers, but I know people today, younger than 35 who think whatever is set to the homepage IS the internet.

Some had Google as their homepage. Some Facebook.

I learned this when they would be like "Josh, the internet is down, can you help me?" and I'm like wahhhhh? Come to find out Facebook had an outage. "I just opened the internet and its not working". :facepalm:

Re: Show HN: I solved my New Tab page

#129

Post by softwarebeware »

mosselman wrote: post #78
oars wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I detest this meme where supposedly every hour you have is translatable to money. It isn't as if you can sell every hour of your time whenever you feel like it. If it were that way, you'd be able to say: "I pay $1500+ for going to the toilet each month": > A software engineer who makes $100,000 a year, working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, makes about $50/hour. So let's say 1 hour of toilet time per day on average, s…

> I detest this meme where supposedly every hour you have is translatable to money.

> It isn't as if you can sell every hour of your time whenever you feel like it.

Yes, but a public good has costs whether or not you want to acknowledge them.

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