Personalized start pages are websites intended to be the home page of your web browser. They are designed to allow you to easily customize the page. In this way, you can create a page that automatically displays the current news from CNN, or the sporting news from ESPN, or recent articles on your favorite blogs.
Most personalized start pages are set up with a tab view allowing you to target a page to fit certain interests, or to create themed pages like a page for home and a page for the office. Components of the page are often moved around by drag-and-drop. Hovering the mouse pointer over the title bar of a component will change the pointer to arrows pointing in all four directions, signifying that you can now drag the component to where you want it located.
But start pages don't deal just in news and blog posts. You can also add widgets to the page, such as a notepad for leaving yourself a reminder, a scheduler for maintaining events, or an inbox to check your email.
- Getting Started With Personalized Pages
- Turn Netvibes Into Your Own Personal 80's Arcade
- Web Widgets -- What Are They, and How Can I Use Them?
- 9 Productive Web Widgets
Popular Personalized Start Pages
Netvibes: Netvibes is easy-to-use and is more flexible than other custom start pages, but it is not quite as pretty as some of the newer start pages.
iGoogle: Keeping with the philosophy that less is more, iGoogle is rather plain compared to other popular start pages. But, it offers plenty of handy gadgets, and with its tie-in to Google Docs, it might soon become the most productive start page.
Pageflakes: If you want something pretty to look at, Pageflakes is a good choice. It has a sleek design and offers a host of components called "flakes" that add to the productivity and fun.
Webwag: A relative newcomer to the scene, Webwag is off to a good start. The ability to capture portions of web pages and put them on your start page via Widget on Demand is a great feature that will certainly get the attention of other popular start pages.
