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Show HN: Minimal, customizable new tab for Chrome/Firefox

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Re: Show HN: Minimal, customizable new tab for Chrome/Firefox

#71

Post by rascul »

andrelaszlo wrote: post #8

It looks really nice. The first question that pops into my head (being aware that this is a popular category of apps) is: when do people look at blank tabs? Whenever I open a new tab, it's with the intention of entering an address or a search term, and any content would be an unwelcome distraction. I'd be more likely to use something like this if it lived under a regular domain name and I could put it into a pinned t…

> when do people look at blank tabs?

Sometimes I'll open a new tab and click the site I want from my commonly used sites Firefox presents to me on the new tab page. In such cases my hand is already on the mouse and two clicks is about the quickest I can get to one of those sites.

Re: Show HN: Minimal, customizable new tab for Chrome/Firefox

#72

Post by georg-stone »

mherrmann wrote: post #62

The landing page looks awesome. Congratulations on the nice design. I suspect you are being hammered with requests now. Because in both Brave and Chrome, there is about a .5 second delay until the new tab page appears. Until then, there is just a black screen.

For the first time, it can take a while because it needs to cache the data url of an image for offline usage. After that, it should load faster. If you have any performance issues, please open a GitHub issue

Re: Show HN: Minimal, customizable new tab for Chrome/Firefox

#73

Post by tzot »

klez wrote: post #60
davgoldin wrote: post #53

Looks nice, I wish you best of luck! I personally haven't seen my "new tab" page in a very long time. What I'm doing instead: in current tab hit Cmd+L to focus on address bar, type query/address hit Option+Enter to open resulted page in a new tab. Skipping a bunch of clicks and the "new tab" page. Should be Ctrl+L Alt+Enter on Windows.

I'm curious: is there a particular reason for this very specific workflow? Is there an advantage I'm not seeing over Ctrl+T, type url, press Enter? Or is it just the way you do it?

> Is there an advantage I'm not seeing over Ctrl+T

My own experience is that all of the times I press Ctrl+T is to open a new tab to enter a location I want to navigate to; I don't care much for what the new tab displays (this is why I set my default new tab to a blank page), and if I did, it would probably be a distraction.

Re: Show HN: Minimal, customizable new tab for Chrome/Firefox

#74

Post by bcye »

andrelaszlo wrote: post #8

It looks really nice. The first question that pops into my head (being aware that this is a popular category of apps) is: when do people look at blank tabs? Whenever I open a new tab, it's with the intention of entering an address or a search term, and any content would be an unwelcome distraction. I'd be more likely to use something like this if it lived under a regular domain name and I could put it into a pinned t…

I recently configured my new tab page to be a minimal html file, with a list of commonly used links and a hotkey associated with each.

I can immediately redirect to any with 0-9 and still have quick access to the address bar via ctrl+k

Re: Show HN: Minimal, customizable new tab for Chrome/Firefox

#76

Post by scary-size »

I don’t like that Chrome forces you to install an extension to modify the new tab (to such an extent). With Safari, I have it pointed at a local HTML file. That file contains a mini web app with my bookmarks. It has keyboard shortcuts, history and fuzzy search built into it.

Re: Show HN: Minimal, customizable new tab for Chrome/Firefox

#77

Post by georg-stone »

scary-size wrote: post #76

I don’t like that Chrome forces you to install an extension to modify the new tab (to such an extent). With Safari, I have it pointed at a local HTML file. That file contains a mini web app with my bookmarks. It has keyboard shortcuts, history and fuzzy search built into it.

Really? You can do that? How?

Re: Show HN: Minimal, customizable new tab for Chrome/Firefox

#78

Post by arp242 »

scary-size wrote: post #76

I don’t like that Chrome forces you to install an extension to modify the new tab (to such an extent). With Safari, I have it pointed at a local HTML file. That file contains a mini web app with my bookmarks. It has keyboard shortcuts, history and fuzzy search built into it.

For Firefox I have my own little extension that just loads a HTML page with more or less the same as what you're describing. I presume you can also do that with Chrome, but I don't use it so idk.

I don't really get why this isn't just a setting, but ah well. There are some extensions that do this out there, but I found all behaved wonky. I'm not sure if they're "doing it wrong" or because I have it easier as I don't need any settings and can just load a static HTML file. I'm not an expert on any of this.

For those interested, in manifest.json I have:

  {
      "manifest_version":          2,
      "name":                      "newtab",
      "description":               "newtab",
      "version":                   "0.5",
      "browser_specific_settings": {"gecko": {"id": "XXX@XXX.XXX"}},

      "chrome_url_overrides": {"newtab": "newtab.html"},
      "permissions":          ["clipboardRead"]
  }
And then in newtab.html you can just put anything. It has the clipboardRead permission for some JS code I have to add a "go" button if the clipboard contains an URL

Re: Show HN: Minimal, customizable new tab for Chrome/Firefox

#79

Post by majkinetor »

klez wrote: post #60
davgoldin wrote: post #53

Looks nice, I wish you best of luck! I personally haven't seen my "new tab" page in a very long time. What I'm doing instead: in current tab hit Cmd+L to focus on address bar, type query/address hit Option+Enter to open resulted page in a new tab. Skipping a bunch of clicks and the "new tab" page. Should be Ctrl+L Alt+Enter on Windows.

I'm curious: is there a particular reason for this very specific workflow? Is there an advantage I'm not seeing over Ctrl+T, type url, press Enter? Or is it just the way you do it?

That "type of worklofw" is the main workflow. The difference is that he is using a shortcut rather than clicking URL bar. U dont always need a new tab.

Re: Show HN: Minimal, customizable new tab for Chrome/Firefox

#80

Post by scary-size »

georg-stone wrote: post #77
scary-size wrote: post #76

I don’t like that Chrome forces you to install an extension to modify the new tab (to such an extent). With Safari, I have it pointed at a local HTML file. That file contains a mini web app with my bookmarks. It has keyboard shortcuts, history and fuzzy search built into it.

Really? You can do that? How?

In desktop Safari, open Settings, select General, then enter a "file://..." URL in the "Homepage" text field.
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