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What is this webiste all about?
  • Do you know the feeling when you realise you forgot to backup your bookmarks after you reinstalled your computer?
  • Do you get frustrated too when you're sitting behind a computer that's not your own and you can't find anything on the web because you don't have your own bookmarks?
THAT'S what this website is all about.

Well, of course it's not about those frustrated feelings, but what i've done is creating a solution to those problems!


Tell me more!
Got you interested, huh?
Once you have obtained a login you can access this website with your own username and password. This way our program knows who you are and will load your personal settings and preferences.
Of course it would be a bit of a pain in the ass to log in every time you want to access your bookmarks, so that's why i've created the 'Cookie' option. If you check this option the computer will remember who you are and will let you access your bookmarks without having to log in - provided you access them within the timespan of 2 weeks after your last log in.


Features

Let's review these features one by one:

Managing your bookmarks
With a few clicks you can manage all your bookmarks. And of course you can assign every bookmark to a certain category, to keep everything well organised.
Besides bookmarks i've also created a few standard forms you can add to you bookmarks. For example: the Google search form - it allows you to enter a search query directly from your own personal Startpage. It is not possible to add such forms yourself, however i'm open to suggestions for new ones which will become available if i approve of them.
Something i'm working on is the possibility to view other's bookmarks. When adding a bookmark there's already an option public - public bookmarks will be viewable for others as soon as i finish this new feature.
Scheduler
It thought: well, if i'm gonna make things comfortable, i might as well do it good. So, i programmed a little scheduler too.
This scheduler will look for coming events each time a session starts*1. When necessary it will popup a window (so disable your popup-disabler for this domain), notifying you of this. You can determine yourself how many hours or days in advance you want to be notified.
I'm still tweaking this functionality, deciding what other options i should provide you with, etc. Any suggestions are welcome.

*1   A new session is started:
-::-  when you arrive at this site and have to log in (so it starts after you're logged in)
-::-  when you arrive at this site and your cookie gets activated, to log you in automatically
-::-  when you log out and then log in again
-::-  after you have been idle for about half an hour (actually this just terminates your current session)
Layout management
Under Preferences in the menu you'll find a series of input fields that enable you to adjust the colors of the bookmark-page.
In the future i'll probably add the possibility of changing font-types and sizes as well.
Also, you can find here a few practical settings you can toggle on or off, like displaying the forms you've selected, opening the pages in a new windows, etc.
Interaction with other users
You have the possibility to copy bookmarks to other users. To make sure people are not going to abuse this you first have to authorize a user before (s)he can copy bookmarks to you.
Furthermore, there is also a message-system, allowing you to send messages to other users. Again, authorization rules apply. This message system gets automatically triggered whenever someone copies a bookmark to your list, notifying you of this.
Hopefully, our database will soon contain many users with many bookmarks. So i thought it would be nice to create a possibity to share your bookmarks with others in terms of search-possibilites.
When you add a bookmark you can already see an option 'public: yes / no'. If you make your bookmark public, it means that others can view your bookmark too / find it with the search. Well, in the future that is, cause i still have to implement this functionality. Something that already works tho, is a script that will update the description of the url automatically by using the page's metatags. That way you won't have to give the description yourself.
Internet Radio
Besides normal website-bookmarks, you can also bookmark internet-radiostations (that you can listen to using - for example - winamp).
Another great thing is, that at the same time you'll have a nice overview of which songs your favourite stations are playing. Besides that, the main page allows you to access all individual histories (of recently played songs) and the possibility to tune in directly to any of the stations.
Notepad
I made a replica of the Windows-program Notepad, so you can save notes online. (Very handy if you're not using your own computer and you want to write down some information for later use (on your own computer)).
It supports almost all the original features.
Security
This is not really a feature, but i just would like to explain a few things here.

No one will be able to view your bookmarks.
They are protected with your password, which is stored in the database with an encryption. So even i won't be able to determine your password. However, if you choose a simple password - like the name of your partner - it's still easy for people to gain access and mess with your bookmarks and settings.

Cookies
These magical little things create great comfort. If you login using cookies*2, you won't have to enter your username and password everytime you access your Personal Startpage on the same computer. So don't check this option when logging in if you're using a public computer (or one other people use you don't trust)
When you log out, the cookie will be destroyed and you'll have to log in again.
If you log in with cookies from computer 1 and browser A and later you log in with cookies from computer 2 or computer 1 and browser B, the previous cookie will be destroyed. Consider the following scenario: you log in from someone else's computer and accidentally switch on cookies. If you realize this when you get home, all you have to do is log in from your own computer and the previous cookie will lose it's validity. That's why i made it this way.

Security Levels
By default the security level is High (see Preferences in the menu when you're logged in). What this means is that although cookies are enabled, you still have to log in every session*1 to access your Preferences, Scheduler, etc.
I strongly recommend you keep it set to high!

*2   Cookies are little entities that are stored in your browser and that contain information about the website that uses them, when they expire (loose their validity) and also have a name and a value which are used for validation purposes by the website