Start portal discussion thread

[michieldewit]

1. Could you make the URL just start.me available, instead of http://www.start.me? As you can imagine, this is not a priority, just a really minor, silly suggestion.

I'm afraid that is not possible. We currently use Heroku for our hosting, which means there is no fixed IP-address for our service. To be able to use start.me, we would have to set an A-record with an IP-address. That's not possible. Why would you prefer start.me, btw?

2. Another minor suggestion, but I really miss this one: colors for widgets! Here's how they look in Netvibes, for instance. It's not an urgent request, of course, but you can't deny it looks so good!

Colors and other customizations are on our list. However, we do value the general looks of start.me, so one of our priorities is to make sure the app will look beautiful. Colors may make the whole thing look a little tacky. As a matter of fact, we are working on a major design overhaul. We would value your opinion a lot. Why not join our beta?

3. This is indeed kinda urgent request, I really, really miss this feature in start.me: An embedded audio player for podcast‼


Netvibes uses a Flash based player for podcast, I think. Here's the podcast I'm listening to right now — works like a charm! Trust me: it would be TOTALLY AWESOME if you could add a HTML5 player instead!

Have you tried embedding a player with out Embed widget? Flash content cannot be embedded at the moment. So perhaps we would have to add support for flash to make it work. Can you give me an example of the flash component you would like to use?

By the way, does start.me have a custom forum or a Get Satisfaction / UserVoice account in order to submit feedback or report bugs? IDK if it's OK to use Pale Moon forums to do it.

We use Zendesk for that. The forum feature is not currently advertized, but feel free to send us feedback through support.start.me (or the linked email address support@start.me).

[KNTRO]

1. Could you make the URL just start.me available, instead of http://www.start.me? As you can imagine, this is not a priority, just a really minor, silly suggestion.

I'm afraid that is not possible. We currently use Heroku for our hosting, which means there is no fixed IP-address for our service. To be able to use start.me, we would have to set an A-record with an IP-address. That's not possible. Why would you prefer start.me, btw?

Ha! It doesn't matter actually. But:
1. Your service is named start.me. I would enter just start.me at the web browser's URL bar and hope that be the correct URL. But it's not — It redirects to http://www.start.me. Feels silly.
2. IMHO www. is deprecated, outdated, expired — it's like if we're in the 90s yet.
3. When speaking about URLs, I think the shortest, the better today, especially when you people got a .me domain, which I think it's pretty cool. So, on one hand you have a ninety www. and on the other hand you have a nowadays .me. Weird, isn't it?

But just speakin' my mind, nothing really necessary. Most URLs still use www. today. What a shame!

2. Another minor suggestion, but I really miss this one: colors for widgets! Here's how they look in Netvibes, for instance. It's not an urgent request, of course, but you can't deny it looks so good!

Colors and other customizations are on our list. However, we do value the general looks of start.me, so one of our priorities is to make sure the app will look beautiful. Colors may make the whole thing look a little tacky. As a matter of fact, we are working on a major design overhaul. We would value your opinion a lot. Why not join our beta?

Join your beta, you said? Sure! I'd love to do so! But first let me finish latest steps about the start.me's es-AR locale. I'm gonna send you a PM next week or so.

3. This is indeed kinda urgent request, I really, really miss this feature in start.me: An embedded audio player for podcast‼


Netvibes uses a Flash based player for podcast, I think. Here's the podcast I'm listening to right now — works like a charm! Trust me: it would be TOTALLY AWESOME if you could add a HTML5 player instead!

Have you tried embedding a player with out Embed widget? Flash content cannot be embedded at the moment. So perhaps we would have to add support for flash to make it work. Can you give me an example of the flash component you would like to use?

No, I haven't. But that would mean a 2step task actually for each podcast I would like to add. I should first add an embedded player and then add the podcast itself. Not very convenient, IMO. Please, note that in Netvibes I only have to add the webfeed podcast's URL, it's just like adding any other feed. There's no need to add a player, since it's part of Netvibes itself.

I actually do not want to use any Flash component. The less Flash we use, the better. Netvibes has that Flash based built in audio player for podcasts. I love that feature since it's a webfeed podcast, so whenever there's new episodes, I can listen to them in situ:
1. Not having to use/open an external player.
2. Not just while switching web browser's tabs,
3. But even when switching Netvibes' tabs in the same dashboard! So damn cool!

Well, I would really love to have such built in audio player in start.me too, but HTML5 based instead.

By the way, does start.me have a custom forum or a Get Satisfaction / UserVoice account in order to submit feedback or report bugs? IDK if it's OK to use Pale Moon forums to do it.

We use Zendesk for that. The forum feature is not currently advertized, but feel free to send us feedback through support.start.me (or the linked email address support@start.me).

Thanks! I'll give a shot!

Best!

[Moonchild]

IMHO www. is deprecated, outdated, expired — it's like if we're in the 90s yet.

IMHO, www. is current and applicable. A "domain" is a general collection of all services provided by an organization. the prefix "www." means you are going to the "generic website" of that organization. The prefix is there for a clear and very good reason (technical limitations of dumping everything on a single server aside).

Compare our own: palemoon.org.
palemoon.org provides a bunch of different services on subdomains, all using the http protocol:

• www for the website
• forum for the forum
• aus for the automatic update service
• blocklist for the blocklist
• relmirror* for binary downloads
• etc.

If you were to point an http client to "palemoon.org" without a prefix, then what does that mean exactly? "I want to connect to the organization". Forwarding this to www. is correct and proper in that case, because since you didn't specify, it will assume you mean "I want general information about the organization" which is found on www.

[KNTRO]

Off-topic:
What you say is correct, MC. But it's not necessary correct. I mean, there's no one way only.

Take a look at DuckDuckGo or Twitter for instance. What happen if you type www.duckduckgo.com or www.twitter.com and hit Enter? It forwards you to HTTPS duckduckgo.com and HTTPS twitter.com. Like a boss. And we're talking about a more 'n' more used search engine everyday & one of the biggest social networks outthere, we're not talking about anyjohndoe-personalpage.com, but about big companies which run a bunch of servers storing a bunch of subdomains. Well, they just got rid of www.. If they can do that, almost everyone can do that too. It's that simple.

[Moonchild]

Off-topic:
It's a matter of approach. DuckDuckGo is their domain created specifically for that service. This also means that their general web presence on that domain is their service because it doesn't require a general subdomain for info. In fact, what is required there is a second domain (duck.co) for their company/organization information, or using a different subdomain (like twitter does with about.twitter.com) instead of www for company info. So, it very much depends on the kind of business you run. I just don't agree at all with the opinion that "www." is somehow outmoded or "90s" because it most certainly is not.

[Moonchild]

With the overhaul of the main start portal UI that went live yesterday, I'd like to hear your feedback (both positive and negative) of the current state of the start portal, and if you have any suggestions for improvement, they are welcome as well!

Please do forward through any comments/feedback (good and bad) you receive from your users about the new start page.
We are also very open to receive ideas what people would like to see in next releases of the start page.

[x-15a2]

My page went largely unchanged and remained fully functional after the start portal update. Mine configuration is widgets only, no bookmarks and they all look exactly as they did before. The only significant change that I noticed was the new search bar, which had defaulted back to !G, so I immediately switched it back to DuckDuckGo and all is well.

[somdcomputerguy]

My version of the start.me page kept it's overall look and function also. As was posted above by x-15a2, the search bar defaulted to Google. It also became 'un-disableable', but I just changed it's default search engine option to something else, as I have DDG as the default in the search bar next to the address bar. Image uploads no longer work, again, but this isn't really that important to me anymore. If it gets fixed sooner rather than later, all the better though..

[KNTRO]

With the overhaul of the main start portal UI that went live yesterday, I'd like to hear your feedback (both positive and negative) of the current state of the start portal, and if you have any suggestions for improvement, they are welcome as well!

Please do forward through any comments/feedback (good and bad) you receive from your users about the new start page.
We are also very open to receive ideas what people would like to see in next releases of the start page.

Well, I think you're talking about the Pale Moon START page only rather than the whole start.me website, right? If so, I'd say:

• What about changing the big icons to the smaller size? I think the E-mail widget icons' size is OK.
• This is the Pale Moon forum page I created for personal use. I think the Announcements feed widget should be added to the Pale Moon START page, since it's the most important "institutional" info stream with very important updates that any Pale Moon active user should know from time to time. Just in my opinion, of course.

That's all for now. If I think of something else, I'll let you know.

[Moonchild]

I was talking more about the overall layout of the page since it has changed, not the specific Pale Moon start page.

Having an announcement widget up is indeed a good idea but I'm not sure if it is going to be very useful to be on an actual start page to be presented every time. Announcements are few and far between since they are only used for major impacting things. I'll give it some thought.

As for the icon size: that would be problematic because of the titles not wrapping - they would just be cut off. I've already indicated the whitespace/wrapping issue to start.me but so far we don't have a working solution yet.

EDIT: I've added the RSS widget since it fits decently. Note that it may take some time for the CDN to catch up on displaying the changes.

[KNTRO]

Announcements are few and far between since they are only used for major impacting things. I'll give it some thought.

You said it: major impacting things. And yes, they are: Pale Moon new releases, changes into Pale Moon Sync, forum maintenance, etc. Yes, they are important news, they deserve an entry!

As for the icon size: that would be problematic because of the titles not wrapping - they would just be cut off. I've already indicated the whitespace/wrapping issue to start.me but so far we don't have a working solution yet.

OK. Yeah, I think I realized that the other day. Well, one more item in the list of fixes then.

EDIT: I've added the RSS widget since it fits decently. Note that it may take some time for the CDN to catch up on displaying the changes.

Cool! Hey, they look not so bad after all! Really!

By the way, I'm not sure about how the start.me's webfeed widget works when updating/reloading for new content. If I'm not wrong, I think the webfeed widget checks for new entries when you load a start.me page only. I mean, it's not 24/7 fully automatic, but it's kinda semi-automatic, as it shows you new content only when you load the start.me page containing the said feed widget. Is that correct? In other words, will the Pale Moon Announcements feed refresh semi-automatically when loading the Pale Moon START only?

Thanks for having in mind my humble suggestion, MC!