Used to be that your homepage (the page that loads when your browser opens) was maybe your favorite site, maybe it was email, a news portal, whatever. But over the last few years, more and more companies are creating homepage portals, combining all of your needs with widgets onto one page. Google started it I believe, and it was impressive, used by many including myself, with hundreds of widgets to crowd up the page, email, webcams, weather, games, etc. But Google lacked what a few startups where offering, tabs. Their are so many widgets, that people wanted tabs to organize them. Eventually Google caught up, but each portal has its own little pluses and minuses.
Google
Pros: The most widgets of them all, thousands for all sorts of needs and wants.
Design, it is done in typical Google cleanness, with ajax love.
Finally has tabs, and integrates other Google apps well, such as Notebook, Reader, Calendar.
Cons: (as perceived by me) Cannot share the page, even a tab. This is something I and others would like.
Search widgets are limited and not well implemented.
Initial load is oddly slow and laggy.
Protopages
Pros: Same as above, however, it also allows you to share tabs of your choice.
Even better control over design
Cons: Limited widgets
Shared tabs cannot be edited by others/guests
Netvibes
Pros: Sames as above, except for one big bonus, it has the best implementation of search I have seen, a double click on Enter will put you search term into 20 engines and give you the results, in clean preview windows. I am using Netvibes right now for this feature alone.
Cons: Design is blockier than I would like. And I don’t have as much access to other Google apps. Has an import for rss feeds, but you cannot combine them.
Pageflakes
Pros: Still learning this one, has most of the same features as above, including being able to share pages, and let others edit those shared pages, but they do need to sign in.
Cons: Still needs many more widgets to meet the same functionality of netvibes.
There are other portals, and more that can be said about these. But I am tired….good night.
[tags] netvibes, portals, pageflakes, google+personalized+home, protopages [/tags]
Tags: to-be-filed by Monkey King
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