The preview doesn't even work in Firefox, which is disappointing.
I love the idea, however, the format doesn't work for me at all. Showing the startup's website takes a long time to load, and it's a bad user experience.
Instead what you want to show people who open a new tab is a standardized UI (I'd go for: the startup name, what is does in one line, one standard-sized image, some text, and a link). If you'd do that, you could preload one or several startups and make those tabs load instantly. That way it's a lot less jarring and distracting for the user.
I also thought about the "title, description, screenshot" approach. But I really wanted startuptabs to be a stage for the startups. My goal is to make it easy for quick feedback from the community. When sites load slow, bad colors, etc... it should become apparent. Or the reverse, when sites load fast and looks great, they will stick out.
> When sites load slow, bad colors, etc... it should become apparent.
It's not only that. When your user opens a new tab, they don't expect a huge marketing website to already be there. It's too disrupting, and in my opinion the overlay element just adds to the clutter.
If nothing else, a page like http://startuptabs.com/tab/ that doesn't have the install overlay on every load might be nice (essentially just startframe with your page info). That way users can at least set that as their new tab URL without having to wait for a proper plugin.
I tried this on Chrome Version 31.0 and found a defect. If there are less than 5 tasks on current day, it allows to enter tasks for previous days (till the count becomes 5). But when you do that, it wipes out the tasks that you had entered for current day and replace those with tasks entered for past date.
Sorry about that :( Unfortunately, that's not supposed to happen. It's supposed to remove the field when you go back to previous days.
That said, you're the second person to report this. I haven't found a fix yet because I haven't been able to reproduce the bug - it's weird.
I'm going to rewrite that part and see if this gets fixed on the next release but, I won't lie, it's gonna be a shot in the dark. Mind pinging me at john[at]dayboard.co so I can follow up when I can get this fixed? Thanks!
That's correct. Sure feel free to drop me a message at thakur.com[at]gmail after you put some fix. I am loving it and would let you know if I encounter any other issues.
But it is there! In any case, hi hello. :) I'm working on history -- but Chrome storage only allows me to go back 30 days or so. Maybe 45. Dealbreaker?
Everyone has a startup they wish was receiving more publicity, this product does that for free. The problems with it however. Occasionally I have to wait a little while while the page is loading or it fails to load at all. One time I received a js notice informing me that Google Maps is disabled for the website I was currently on. That's enough for me. I don't want to wait for new tabs to open which then sometimes interrupt me.
Chrome should fix this. There should be a way to have an app (in a tab) and also to show the bookmarks bar on that one page. Then an option in the app could turn it on and off. Beyond this apps control, probably.
A link isn't enough. I need one click access to my bookmarks.
Great idea! Only drawback I'm finding is that I don't want to wait for the page to load, I'm typing my URL and hitting enter before the startup's page has loaded.
Good for wanting to randomly find a startup, but was hoping it'd be a way to discover new startups as part of my daily internet usage. Don't think I'll end up seeing many of the pages this way.
Thank! Will be working on speeing up the site loads but it's a bit tricky. Someone else mentioned maybe uses images and preload them. Still thinking about how I should tackle this.
I always have about:blank as default page in new tabs because anything else is a distraction from my actual intention why I chose to open a new tab. Too often I find myself forgetting what I was actually doing (or parts of it) when a new tab has irrelevant information in it. I could imagine that it’s a psychological effect similar to this one: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-walking-throug...
What a great idea that I'll never ever use as it will just kill all productivity :)
Imagine working on a project, need to Google something and suddenly it's 1,5 hours later and you're reading up on some random framework you've never used and certainly don't need for your current project because this cool startup that popped up in your new tab gave you another great idea and and and...
Would be awesome if not for the fact that it displays the extension info in a column on the left for every new tab. Why does it do that? Why isn't there an option to hide that? I added the extension to see the startup pages, not to see the damn column.
Even with only using the preview on their website, Startuptabs provides something interesting: it's a super easy way to page through the websites of random startups. After bouncing through several dozen I see that:
-95% of these are thinly styled Twitter Bootstrap sites with huge hero images.
-Sweet jesus most of these load super slow.
-There are some interesting ideas here, but a whole lot of "[buzz word][buzz word][buzz word][buzz word], for the [buzz word]" copy.
In fact, this is a great way to see how you should change your startup's website so it doesn't sink into all this sameness.
Oh, and perhaps having a 1920x1080 photograph saved as a 1.3 MB+ PNG image as a background is a bad idea too...
You're right, Startuptab definietely reveals how you should not create a landing page. After using it for months, "load speed" as google mentioned is one of the most important aspect.
Love it! Now all you need is a "Valleywag version" that will show you a random startup that doesn't make any sense (eg. subscription service for coins - basically any startup mentioned on Valleywag, I suppose?)
Google has disabled use of the Maps API for this application. The provided key is not a valid Google API Key, or it is not authorized for the Google Maps Javascript API v3 on this site. If you are the owner of this application, you can learn about obtaining a valid key here: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/...
Love it. Works for me in Chrome (Version 35.0.1916.153 to be precise)
Only downside: it's basically the browser equivalent of remembering you have to get your keys from the bedroom, going upstairs to get them, forgetting why you went back to your room in the first place, picking up the copy of Wired on your nightstand, heading out, and getting to the office only to realise you forgot your keys.
Quick thing which I think I've noticed is this appearing in the console bar:
"Denying load of chrome-extension://bknfklfehllgmnbmlhejjoalkimnikfc/jquery.min.map. Resources must be listed in the web_accessible_resources manifest key in order to be loaded by pages outside the extension."
I did get a warning message from Google about your maps dev key not being valid.
I have the same issue after installing the extension. Disabling it and the error message is not showing anymore, it's definitely coming from this extension.
No it's definitely from that extension. Goes away when the extension is disabled. I'm debugging a lot of javascript atm and the console now has that message in it even when testing on localhost. No biggie but does seem a bit odd.
Great idea! Just wondering, why does the Chrome extension need to "access my data on all websites" if this only operates when I create a new tab? Also, the StartupTabs sidebar frequently blocked chunks of content for me, and even if I closed it in one tab, the sidebar would reappear as soon as I opened a new tab.
Hey, I wasn't sure how I can lessen the permission usage. I've tried removing almost everything in my permission area and it's still says that. I've also checked out many other chrome extensions and this seems to be common. I'll be looking into this more soon.
In regards to the tab, I'll add the feature to remember that you collapsed the tab so it doesn't reappear until you uncollapse it.
I love the idea, however, the format doesn't work for me at all. Showing the startup's website takes a long time to load, and it's a bad user experience.
Instead what you want to show people who open a new tab is a standardized UI (I'd go for: the startup name, what is does in one line, one standard-sized image, some text, and a link). If you'd do that, you could preload one or several startups and make those tabs load instantly. That way it's a lot less jarring and distracting for the user.
Also, a Firefox version is a must-have.