dashboard

Netvibes provides an advanced dashboard solution for your new tab page. The feature richness on a somewhat complex UX and slow performance.

Performance:
Takes a few seconds to load. When using this start page, the slowness is quite apparent, it isn’t the servers – being robust and able to handle traffic; it’s the extra widgets, special effects and functionality that really weight down on the platform, making it slow. It’s a heavy one.

UX:
The website is fairly clean, no ads, a whole bunch of links at the bottom of the page – but those are quite neatly organized and can also be hidden from view. A lot of space is wasted for no particularly good reason, with a tiny search bar in the middle of all this space at the top of the page.

The top bar is mismatched in color and style, and cannot be customized or hidden. Working with the platform is intuitive, but sometimes some basic functionality is missing (take for example re-organizing your bookmarks, it can’t be done!) – they can only be sorted. Also, some extra features that get in the way of useful features (take for example search by tag within your bookmarks – it’s easier to run a google search). All in all some of the UI is good, some is poor. Another disappointment is that tabs get stuck sometimes and page must be refreshed.

Features:

• Large collection of gadgets to choose from – ranging from an email assistant, Facebook feed, Analytics feed, Todo list, Flight list, Weather, Alexa, Ebay, Calculator and thousands more.
• Bookmarking is not that easy, and the bookmark tags & tag search functionality just gets in the way. Categories for bookmarks would have been much better. Bookmarks open in a new window, nice.
• Advanced RSS capabilities

Export of your data
Super easy. Just click settings & download. Voila.

Available for:
All major browsers

Price:
Free to use. Premium version starts at $2 per month.

Try http://www.netvibes.com now!

Symbaloo is an icon-based start page, where colorful images serve as links on a dark background.

Performance:
Loads quite quickly.

UX:
This start page has a nice and clean design. Background can be changed to white if the black is too gloomy after a while.
Playing with the tiles can be satisfying, but only to a point. It takes a long time to add each link, and there is a limit of 52 bookmarks per page.

The central 8-tile space is also a bad decision for usability purposes, because every time I want to read another RSS feed, I have to click it for it to appear in the center square. This defeats the purpose – might as well open in a new window. Search also appears there, but disappears when reading an RSS feed. At least links open in a new window.

Features:

• Bookmarking
• RSS feeds
• A couple of basic widgets to choose from
• Custom backgrounds
• Pages can be shared

Export:
No export available

Available for:
All major platforms and browsers

Pricing:
Free to use. Paid versions available for Educational organizations and Businesses.

Try Symbaloo now.

Last update to this article: October 24, 2019.

Performance:
Quite fast, no complaints. A couple of seconds to load, but when loaded runs very fast & smooth.

UX:
The interface is mostly intuitive and fast. That’s awesome. Although the interface appears to be cluttered, most widgets can be quickly deleted and cleaned up, and theme & colors are configurable. Some functionality, however, is very poorly implemented. (Take for example adding bookmarks) If you’ve got quite a few bookmarks, you’re in for a nightmare. Another striking problem is the fluid state of everything: it’s like you’re always in edit mode, so half the time I’m changing my layout or my bookmarks without any intention to do so. True, it’s just as easy to change back, but why can’t everything stay in place once I set it right?

Features:

• Extensive collection of gadgets available – including several user-designed gadgets
• Bookmarking
• RSS feeds
• Export:
  No export functionality is available bookmarks? Forget it: no backup, no option to ever export them. If this start page dies, all your bookmarks die with it.

  Available for:
  All major browsers

  Pricing:
  Free to use. Paid version for $30 a year (to remove the ads).

  Try Protopage now.