[thelist] setting the home page on your browser

[Christian Heilmann]

Nan Harbison wrote:
> Hi All,
>  
> I have a client who wants to put a button on her website for people to click
> on and make her site their home page.
> Of course, when I google for this all I can find is how to do it from the
> browser -> tools, not programmatically from the webpage.
> Can someone point me to a reference for this, or better yet, give me some
> reasons why I should tell my client this is a bad idea.
>   
Reason: 1997 is over.
Reason: Every browser does this differently and you need to change it 
every time there is a new one (check the "Make Y! your home page" link 
at http://www.yahoo.com/)
Reason: Users do not like to be told what to do. Especially 
inexperienced internet users are very happy to start with a web page 
that offers them a lot of choices of things they are looking for - this 
is why Yahoo, MSN and Apple still have start pages and every ISP offers 
them.
Reason: Without scripting, nothing happens
Reason: This is one link that clutters the interface even more - the 
more links you have on a page the less worthy of indexing the page 
appears for google
Reason: because you tell them so, they pay you as the expert to build 
their web site

If you need proof, google for set as homepage script - every link will 
say you need IE5+ to support this functionality and that is a sign that 
there is something very outdated going on.