Take This Homepage & Shove It

February 10, 2009 1:13 PM

"Set As Homepage" - I have a client who is obsessed with the notion of adding a "Set As Homepage" text link or button to the header of their website - you know, like everyone used to do circa '02. Now setting aside for a moment how worthlessly moronic that may be, I am curious, do any current browsers even permit that kind of javascript anymore - like from a security standpoint? Is it a moot point? (Hoping so)
posted by MaxVonCretin to computers & internet (12 comments total)

It doesn't work at all in Firefox. It's IE only.
posted by zsazsa at 2:31 PM on February 10

This website shows how using DHTML, but yeah, IE only.

Google decides to give instructions in their FAQ rather than use code. Maybe use something similar to their instructions?
posted by ALongDecember at 2:33 PM on February 10

No, it's not possible, at least with any of the "modern" browsers.
posted by mkultra at 2:35 PM on February 10

You cannot set the homepage through javascript (from the document level anyway) in Firefox that I know of. You can't even set a regular bookmark through javascript. This is a feature rather than a bug. It's not going to be included any future versions of Firefox, either.

Moreover, .setHomepage() and .addFavorite() are IE-specific methods, not part of the JS standard, so you shouldn't expect to see them in Safari or Opera as well (though I haven't checked). They may very well be cut from future versions of IE as well. That means a very significant portion of the users won't be able to use this functionality today, and tomorrow maybe nobody will.

Hopefully that satisfies your client.
posted by Hildago at 2:40 PM on February 10

Holy smokes, what a jumble of words and punctuation that was. Sorry for the fast typing, I'm at work.
posted by Hildago at 2:42 PM on February 10

The problem with telling your client that nobody does it and it can't be done: Sooner or later, he's going to look at Yahoo. He won't care about the specifics, but it might make him wonder about your abilities. (Top left, if you see random promo text links, you might have to clear cookies, but it's there.)
posted by sageleaf at 2:51 PM on February 10

Wait a sec, I see a "Make Yahoo your Homepage" link but only in IE. Maybe it's detecting the browser?
posted by ALongDecember at 2:54 PM on February 10

Yahoo is detecting the browser, but doesn't exclude FF. In FF, it says:
1. Drag the "Y!" and drop it onto the "House" icon.
2. Select "Yes" from the pop up window.
3. Nothing, you're done.
Technically, very different, but again, the OP's client won't give a fig.
posted by sageleaf at 3:00 PM on February 10

I think a browser detector plus button-for-IE/instructions-for-other browsers is the perfect solution.
posted by By The Grace of God at 4:05 PM on February 10

fyi- the yahoo link shows up in safari and does nothing.
posted by pointilist at 7:03 PM on February 10

You can add a bookmark in Firefox as an alternative.

There's an example here.
posted by ph00dz at 10:03 PM on February 10

So to summarize - no single plug-and-play solution. The Yahoo example is very useful though. I'm confident that once I lay out the relative complexity and additional time required for an implementation like Yahoo's, this will whither on the vine. Thanks everyone.
posted by MaxVonCretin at 7:00 AM on February 11