Start for Windows

Users of Google Chrome know that by default, when you open a new tab, your most-visited Web sites will be displayed as thumbnails. Start is an extension for Chrome that displays your bookmarks and other selected content instead. It's an interesting, and useful, alternative to the standard Chrome options.

Start installs without any fuss, as is typical of Chrome extensions. By default, the extension displays icons representing bookmarked Web pages, which may be great for some users, but not for us; we ended up with a tab full of New York restaurants that we'd bookmarked in anticipation of a vacation about a year ago, and a slew of recipes. Not exactly helpful, but we're also willing to admit that we're not as organized in our bookmark habits as some.

We were surprised that Start didn't seem to let users choose a particular folder of bookmarks to use; we would have found that more useful. We did like it that Start lets you add either one individual RSS feed or a bundle of feeds to its display, making it easy to keep up with your favorite blogs and news sources. There are also options to display bookmarks in a tree view as well as Web apps, including Gmail, YouTube, Google Search, and the Chrome Web Store. Overall, we think that Start is an interesting way to customize your Chrome experience, especially if you're aggressive about managing your bookmarks.