Firefox etc. default homepage

Jeff Spaleta jspaleta at gmail.com
Sat May 7 18:53:45 UTC 2005


On 5/7/05, Kyrre Ness Sjobak <kyrre at solution-forge.net> wrote:
> It is, at least to some degree, "pushed down their throat", as a user
> who clicks on "web browser" expects that, and nothing more/less - 

Most users using a desktop today... use IE as a browser... im pretty
sure most users 'expect' to see an MSN default page.. or a page for
AOL or some other ISP homepage.. if you want to get technical about
expectations for 'most' computer users.  Extrapolating your mother's
experience with firefox.. doesn't say anything about common
expectation.

What you expect.... is not what I expect... and somehow I doubt either
of us can be held up as an example of what the typical desktop user is
thinking.  I don't expect to see a google page or any other specific
page. I expect to see a default that I will end up needing changing..
based on the circumstances in which that particular machine happens to
be used in.. that is what I expect.  At work my browser homepage ends
up being an internal page from the internal webserver.  At home right
now its, http://darthside.blogspot.com/.

The reality is most people installing fedora ARE admins of their own
machines and I don't see a Fedora specific default homepage as being a
particular poorer choice than a firefox default.  The default page
could be better in appearence and provide a link to the standard
default firefox page and perhaps a brief instruction on how to choose
a new homepge. But as a concept i think its perfectly acceptable to
replace the default homepage with something fedora specific instead of
firefox specific.  The devil's in the details of what the fedora
specific default should be. But I don't think it should be the firefox
default... it should be a reasonably useful fedora default.

If an oem does a fedora install... great...and I expect that OEM to
change some default settings as they see fit for thier clients too.  
For large network installs, the network admins can most likely going
to change the default homepage to something site specific anyways.
Arguing about keeping the upstream default browser homepage seems a
bit pedantic. It seems much more sensible to be arguing about what the
fedora specific homepage should be including instead.


-jef




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