StART - Your homepage reinvented!

[Nick H. Supervisor]

<Moved to Software created by our members>

[PsYcHoKiLLa]

Sorry, I can't "stART" my browsing experience with this, like others, Google is faster and I can look for what I want quickly, I would suggest rather than advertising it as a start page I would treat it as a social site to be honest.

Nice work anyways and good luck with your project!

[Jase]

1. Yep, have a solid color background. I have a 100mb cable connection but if those images take 2 seconds for me to load, it will take 10+ seconds for someone on a 10mb/sec adsl connection or worse. 
2. woo awesome Only needs tweaking of about .5 of a second.
3. 'Where would you want to go today?' would be better than grey header text that simply says 'Search'. But even then you need to make it clear that it's an actual search box, that's the point I was getting at  

1. I think having a solid color image would ruin the flow I was originally going for  maybe we can add an option to choose the quality and size of the images, also we optimised the speed last night, head over to the about screen and click "clear local storage" - let me know if that helps

2. it's been added to the list! should be fixed by tonight.

3. I'll see what we can do about this, it seems fine I'm thinking of just making the mouse pointer a hand to click so you know you can click that box.

Looks good! I added it.

thanks mate, please do share what you're using it for and how you use it so we can build statistics and improve it even further.

Oh sure I get that - but I assumed these were available to the server, are they client side only? 

again, nothing is sent to the server, it's all done client side, think about it like modem, we send (the homepage) but we do not receive anything from you. I hope that clears everything up

Beautiful design! Very nicely done. I must agree it is slow loading- perhaps the graphics are too heavy? I'll give it some time on my browsers (Win, Linux, and Mac) and see how it does. But... I do like what I see.

 

Thanks! try clearing the local cache via about screen and see if that improves the loading, also note that you can adjust the image sizes so if the loading is taking too long change the size of the images:

Sorry, I can't "stART" my browsing experience with this, like others, Google is faster and I can look for what I want quickly, I would suggest rather than advertising it as a start page I would treat it as a social site to be honest.

Nice work anyways and good luck with your project!

sure, to each their own.. stART isn't for everyone! thats fine

but do share, how you search for things, bookmark..etc I don't think advertising start as a social site would be a wise move because it's not, it's a homepage to get you on your way but in doing so it looks good.

thanks for your comment, I will note down some things you suggested and see what I can do  

[SoCalRox]

I used it a bit more yesterday before I left work. I need to learn more about how to use it, but the speed improved immensely while using it. The more I used it, the more I liked it. I'm sure it fits in Win10 perfectly. I used it in a Linux VM and will be trying it out on my Mac now in Chrome. You've clearly put a lot of effort into this. Keep up the great work.

[SoCalRox]

One comment- I can't tell when the sliders are on and off. No change in appearance can be confusing.

I did change the resolution to match my screen. Performance is definitely in the acceptable range. Today I'm on my 2012 Macbook Pro I-7 2.6 Ghz and 16 GB of RAM. 

Edit: Also, how do I get a search through Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo/et. al. from it? 

Edited September 5, 2015 by SoCalRox
Added question.

[Farchord]

To be sincere, I like it as it is, but I would like it even more if:

1- It had the possibility to have those 8 latest websites I went through, like the Chrome 'New tab' default page

2- Speed would be awesome, yes

[Jase]

I used it a bit more yesterday before I left work. I need to learn more about how to use it, but the speed improved immensely while using it. The more I used it, the more I liked it. I'm sure it fits in Win10 perfectly. I used it in a Linux VM and will be trying it out on my Mac now in Chrome. You've clearly put a lot of effort into this. Keep up the great work.

hey SoCalRox, It's good to see that the speed has improved! we're still working on making it even more faster!

we're glad the more you used it the more you liked it! it fits in great in windows 10 and we plan on making a stand alone app soon for the windows store. We've put a year and a half of effort into this as it started from something as simple as having your bookmarks to have everything customised how you want it

One comment- I can't tell when the sliders are on and off. No change in appearance can be confusing.

I did change the resolution to match my screen. Performance is definitely in the acceptable range. Today I'm on my 2012 Macbook Pro I-7 2.6 Ghz and 16 GB of RAM. 

Edit: Also, how do I get a search through Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo/et. al. from it? 

Sliders seem to work fine for us and many users, i'm not sure why the switches are not working for you, could there be some extension or something overwriting this?

We're working on adding other search engines later on, but for now since this is the first public release, we're just going to stick with google.. don't worry other search engines will soon be available!

To be sincere, I like it as it is, but I would like it even more if:

1- It had the possibility to have those 8 latest websites I went through, like the Chrome 'New tab' default page

2- Speed would be awesome, yes

1. that's a great idea! thank you! we will look into it!
2. have you tried clearing the cache to see if the speed has improved? if not don't worry, we're working on the speed to make it even more faster.. but give the cache cleaning (via the about page) a shot to see if it will refresh and give the the extra speed boost we applied last night.

[SoCalRox]

Yes, it's very possible something is interfering. I can try it in one of my "clean environment" browsers.

Using it in clean Safari, some things which didn't work in my personal Chrome environment worked, but the sliders still do not visually change when I select them. Also, you may wish to make the save buttons on your config pages more obvious. They sort of small and don't stand out so looking for them can be difficult. 

I still can't search. If I click the whitee box, I get a screen full of pre-selected searches, but I can't do my own.

 

Keep up the great work!

 

 

[Farchord]

Yes, it's very possible something is interfering. I can try it in one of my "clean environment" browsers.

Using it in clean Safari, some things which didn't work in my personal Chrome environment worked, but the sliders still do not visually change when I select them. Also, you may wish to make the save buttons on your config pages more obvious. They sort of small and don't stand out so looking for them can be difficult. 

I still can't search. If I click the whitee box, I get a screen full of pre-selected searches, but I can't do my own.

 

Keep up the great work!

 

 

Just a guess but have you tried to check the dev console in Chrome? (F12, click on Console)

[SoCalRox]

Good suggestion- I'll try it later. I'm about to drive back to my worksite for the week (I live over 200 miles from there.)

[Jase]

Good suggestion- I'll try it later. I'm about to drive back to my worksite for the week (I live over 200 miles from there.)

how did it go?

[SoCalRox]

Nothing much, really.

[Jase]

Nothing much, really.

that's quite strange, have you tried incognito mode? 

[SoCalRox]

Haven't really had much time- I'm wrapping up a project here and haven't had much time to look underneath. 

I hate when work gets in the way of good fun.

[Jase]

Hey Neowin! How are you? Okay guys, it's been a while but we're ready to release a new build for you guys to play with!

• Overall Loading times have been dramatically improved.

• Loading overlay is now removed

• The cursor changes to pointer on clickable elements.

• Wallpaper Sources and basic Copyright information are now a new feature. 

• Bookmark autohide functionality added

• Animated Walls Added. In early development. Support for Most YouTube Videos and quality settings as well as some suggestions.

• Notes - Still Beta (use with caution)

• Search Options Added: Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yahoo.

• Lightbox added for columns within the Expansive Search - supported video and picture sources are; YouTube, Vine, Vidme, Streamable, Vimeo, Imgur. Other sources will open in new tab.

• Export and Import of Settings Added. JSON and XML are functioning options to both download or directly edit for the advanced user.

• Significant Code Optimisation.

• Column Scrolling in Expansive Search, currently limited to top 50 results with scrollable loading in development.

So head over to http://thinqtek.com/start and jump right into it! or simply download our google chrome extension

if you're currently using stART, head over to the about screen and "Clear Local Cache" for the new update to take effect!

I look forward to your comments and remember, positive or negative, I would love to hear it all.

Enjoy Champagne!

[Thomas the Tank Engine]

So, I installed the Chrome extension.  I do like the idea of the app, unfortunately, I want to be able to turn off the background images, it should be our choice, not your choice, if we want to view images!

[Jase]

21 hours ago, Thomas the Tank Engine said:

So, I installed the Chrome extension.  I do like the idea of the app, unfortunately, I want to be able to turn off the background images, it should be our choice, not your choice, if we want to view images!

Hey there, so you want to disable the background images? sure that's easy just select "Use Custom Image Library" from settings.

 

Now if you're talking about colour backgrounds, this is something we can look into.

[Thomas the Tank Engine]

2 hours ago, Jase said:

Hey there, so you want to disable the background images? sure that's easy just select "Use Custom Image Library" from settings.

Tried that, didn't stick, went back to getting images.