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Ask HN: Show me your New Tab

26 points by vladstudio ↗ HN
so I'm planning a new tiny web app to scratch my own itches, based on something I did before [0], but:

- a remote web app;

- available for any browser, including mobile;

- managed collections of links (obviously), quick notes, world clocks

- workspaces, or projects

- keyboard driven filtering (a-la Raycast or Alfred).

It got me thinking – how is everybody else using New tab? What is on your new tab page? Ideally, if you can share a screenshot, e.g. [1], I'd appreciate it a lot.

[0] https://new-tab.vlad.studio/

[1] https://postimages.org/ - you can simply Ctrl-V there.

40 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 92.2 ms ] thread
thanatos519
Mine is

    <html><head><title>~</title></head><body bgcolor="black"></body></html>
vladstudio
curious what to you usually do after Ctrl-T then?
mdwalters
Probably types in the URL or search query next
4gotunameagain
ha ! same :)

ctrl+t, ctrl+l, the first two letters of the website i intend to visit, enter.

duckduckgo as a default search helps because you can do things like: "search term !yt" to search on youtube for example

cloudking
Cool idea, how would it work on mobile?
vladstudio
no idea yet, but hopefully it would work really well :-)
u2077
https://bonjourr.fr
vladstudio
yeah kind of something like that, thanks for the link! I am a big fan of reinventing wheels, though, just for fun (and experience).
comprev
As I own "old" hardware - iPhone 7; MBA (2017) i5/8GB/256; iPad Air (3rd gen) - I always use a blank page as both start page and new tab.

I've found the overhead in processing the "smart" widgets/links makes the device feel much slower, and was a constant reminder how "old" my hardware is.

vladstudio
noted! How do you manage the pages that you visit often?
comprev
Browser history or favourites.

I found that having a list of frequently visited sites dramatically reduced the number I would visit, including news sources. After a while I realised my "view" of the world/current affairs was from a narrow perspective simply because of the echo chamber that "top 5 frequently visited websites" produced.

from 

  <!DOCTYPE html>
  <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
    <head>
      <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
      <title>New Tab</title>
      <style>
        html {
          background-color: #3a3a3a;
        }
      </style>
    </head>
  </html>
fuball63
When I gave up social media sites, I created a little site that has some blogs and sites that are interesting to look at, and my new tab page is set to that.

Yahoo initially began as a links directory, and I thought that was a nice idea, so I made Yayhoo: https://bmsauer.github.io/yayhoo/

I like it a lot. I probably need to update it because I haven't done so in a while.

vladstudio
nice! Links in columns, never fails, always works well.
emrox
On Chrome (browser I use for development) I use the Google Arts & Culture Extension, to have see something nice while working (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-arts-cultur...)

On Firefox (my main browser for all non-dev related things) I just use the main screen with the shortcuts - some of them sticky, most are just often visited pages gathered by the browser itself

nouryqt
I use the Tabliss[1] add-on as my new tab and set it to show me a new unsplash background every time instead of every 15 minutes by default and to show me the local weather in the middle. Looks like this right now: https://i.imgur.com/YRGD0gB.png

[1]: https://tabliss.io/

vladstudio
thanks for the link! (and the screenshot too)
saghm
I wrote a small page that displays a list of "favorites" supplied by the query string that I can "click" with a given keyboard shortcut[1]. This lets me just do <ctrl+t> followed by "0" to go to my first shortcut, "1", for the second, and then going into letters with "a", "b", "c", "d", etc. if there are more than ten (I've never had anywhere close to 36 things that I check often enough to want a minimal shortcut too, but I'm sure someone with the need could come up with some way to modify it to work in a way they liked). I had a Chrome extension that provided a new tab page like this years ago, but when switching to Firefox and not finding something similar, I realized that it wouldn't be too hard to implement it in a browser-independent way.

[1]: https://gist.github.com/saghm/6caf46436f204199d622d6c4d6a41c...

TechBro8615
I use about:blank (empty page) via this extension. [0]

I don't need a new distraction every time I open a new tab.

[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/empty-new-tab-page...

vladstudio
thanks! What do you usually do after Ctrl-T?
TechBro8615
I type the URL of the website I want to visit into the URL bar. Usually I only need to type a few characters to find the match. I also have autocomplete and preloading disabled, so that text I enter is not sent to any remote server before I press the return key.
bravetraveler
I tend to gravitate towards an empty page, or just leave the default of 'most visited'. For Firefox I disable Pocket and everything, I only really benefit from shortcuts to where I go most

I would enjoy moving these features out of my launcher (and the new tab page seems fine): calculator, unit conversion

All of that said, I don't really want a lot. I browse by typing what I wish to visit

gomako
https://papier.app/ I find it good for keeping temporary notes and to do lists. More than anything I am opening new tabs so it's great to remind me. I us nvAlt for note taking and it's quite a natural extension.
wruza
Empty dark page (technically it’s a speeddial with no items because about:blank is too bright). I transitioned from using speeddial to bookmarks bar with links and folders instead, middle-clicking them to open in a new tab.

Ctrl-t only for web and history searches.

Why: new tab is a “click into unknown” ui pattern. With bookmarks bar I see the target right away (unless it’s in a folder ofc). It’s not even that faster, but feels more predictable.