Setting Start-pages and shortcuts

We want to make it as easy as possible for people to return to our pages. As well as ordinary bookmarking, there are two other options. Incidentally, start pages can be used in their own right for outreach.

Desktop shortcuts

You can encourage people to set a desktop shortcut. In some ways, this may be better than a bookmark/favorite, because the short-cut is a visible reminder to revisit a site, rather than being lost among many other bookmarks. The procedure is easy: encourage people to right-click on a blank area of the page and select 'bookmark/favorite' or 'make shortcut' as they choose. It may help people if you give them an apparent hyperlink to click on, which is in fact just blue underlined text, like this:

Right-click here to bookmark or make desktop shortcut.

The title (in your page header) will be that which displays on the shortcut, or in the bookmark file, so make sure it is a meaningful title. For a bookmark file, it is an advantage that it start with an early letter in the alphabet. People can even drag a shortcut onto their start-menu if they wish. If you encourage them to do this, then it may be kind to tell them somewhere how to undo the procedure.

Start-Pages

If you have a really useful reference site, for instance a Community page, it may be worth suggesting to visitors that they set the page as their browser start page. (Start pages can also be used for outreach.) The script below allows users of Internet Explorer, Netscape, and other browsers, to easily set a page as their browser start page. It is in use on this site - note links on trailer bar.

<script language="JavaScript">
<!-- based on script from http://javascript.internet.com/page-details/set-homepage-link.html -->
if (document.all){
document.write('<a class=\'red\' href=\"#\" onClick="this.style.behavior=\'url(#default#homepage)\';this.setHomePage(\'http://www.yoursite.com\');" title=\" IE users: Click here to make the Guide your browser Start Page. (Opera: > Navigation > Set Home Page) \">');
document.write('Start Page</a>');
}
// If it's Netscape 6, tell user to drag link onto Home button
else if (document.getElementById){
document.write('<a class=\"red\" style=\'cursor:help\' href="http://www.yoursite.com" title=\" Make the Web Evangelism Guide your browser Start Page: drag this link onto the browser top-left Home graphic button \" onClick=\'return false\'>Start Page</a>');
}
// If it's Netscape 4 or lower, give instructions to set Home Page
else if (document.layers){
document.write('<span class=\"popup2\" title=\' Make the Guide your browser Start Page: - Go to Preferences in the Edit Menu. Choose Navigator from the list on the left. Click on the Use Current Page button. \'>Start page</span>');
}
// If it's any other browser, for which I don't know the specifications of home paging, display instructions
else {
document.write('<span class=\"popup2\" title=\' Make the Guide your browser Start Page: - Go to Preferences in the Edit Menu. Choose Navigator from the list on the left. Click on the Use Current Page button. \'>Start page</span>');
}
</script>


Note that the two classes used in the links on this site are "red" (which colors the link red) and "popup2" which colors a non-link red, underlined, and with a query mark on mouse hover { cursor: help; color: red; text-decoration: underline; }.

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