I’ve said in the past that Firefox is just a better browser. Now, I’ve discovered it also let’s me open more than one home page, instantly.

I have several web sites I routinely check as soon as I log on, but two of them top the list: CNN.Com and LiveScience.Com. All I have to do in order to get Firefox to open these sites up right away is enter their URLs in as my home page(s) separated by a verticle bar or pipe (|) character. That’s the shift character above the back slash on a Qwerty keyboard (extreme right, second row from the top).

In Firefox, you set your default home page(s) as follows:

• Click Tools on the main menu.
• Click Options.                      *********************************************
• Select the General button or tab.
• At the top where it says location(s), you can do two things:
• * Type in your URLs separated by the vertical bar (|) no spaces in between; for example: http://www.cnn.com/|http://www.livescience.com/ or
• * If you already have just the home pages you want open in separate tabs, click “Use Current Pages” button, which is a lot easier and avoids typos. The tab group will be saved as your default home pages.
• Then, click OK.

That’s it. You can have more than two home pages. Just be aware that slower connection speeds may not like too many pages opening up at one time. Also, if you’re in an office setting and sharing a network connection, even T1, everyone logging in at the same time and opening multiple browser windows at the same time might hammer a few servers and bottleneck some connections. Moderation is a good practice, even in setting default home page(s). But isn’t this cool?

This entry was posted on Monday, August 7th, 2006 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Web Browsing Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.