AIDAN POLLARD
News Editor
Have you ever seen your professor scroll all the way down the Fredonia homepage to log in to their email or OnCourse account?
Well now, those extra 15 seconds of class that seem to linger for a full 50 minutes could be over. There is now, in fact, a better way.
Fredonia’s web team launched the my.fred homepage this semester, and it aims to curate the day’s most important Fredonia news, as well as keep links to all of the campus community’s most important log-ins in one place.
“I think it makes sense for the school to push this homepage,” said junior computer science major Ryan Dunning. “It has a lot of useful links for students.” The page provides links to important contacts in the university, like Academic Advising and the Career Development Office.
The page is customizable, giving the ability to favorite links to websites that will load with the homepage everytime it gets loaded up.
The page was announced in a campus-wide email from the web team earlier this semester, where students, faculty and staff were encouraged to make my.fred their personal homepage.
“A large portion of the time that I use my laptop, I am using it for school related work, so I can totally see the draw of making my.fred my homepage,” said Dunning.
The new homepage serves as an alternative to larger homepages like Google, and to the Fredonia website’s main page, which operates mostly as an advertisement for the school.
My.fred is a more efficient option than Fredonia’s main page, but it still faces the uphill battle of actually accumulating users and pulling the campus away from Google’s homepage.
“Google does such a great job of providing relevant links in the form of favorites [and] bookmarks while also maintaining a clean, simplistic look,” said Dunning. “Meanwhile, my.fred instantly fills your screen with tons of links and announcements. ”
Comparing the two, my.fred clearly has the more tailored page. The audience for my.fred is small and well-defined. But Google offers a much more customizable home, where you can change the color of the page, apply skins or dark modes and look at the Doodle if there is one for that day. Not to mention, Google saves your most frequented links for you, instead of asking the user to find the sites they want easy access to and favorite them themselves.
“It would also be great to have easy access to a search engine from my.fred,” said Dunning. “For the times that you aren’t just using it for school.”
The new homepage serves as an alternative to larger homepages like Google, and to the Fredonia website’s main page, which operates mostly as an advertisement for the school.
My.fred is a more efficient option than Fredonia’s main page, but it still faces the uphill battle of actually accumulating users and pulling the campus away from Google’s homepage.
“Google does such a great job of providing relevant links in the from of favorites [and] bookmarks while also maintaining a clean, simplistic look,” said Dunning. “Meanwhile, my.fred instantly fills your screen with tons of links and announcements. ”
Comparing the two, my.fred clearly has the more tailored page. The audience for my.fred is small and well-defined.
But Google offers a much more customizable home, where you can change the color of the page, apply skins or dark modes and look at the Doodle if there is one for that day. Not to mention, Google saves your most frequented links for you, instead of asking the user to find the sites they want easy access to and favorite them themselves.
“It would also be great to have easy access to a search engine from my.fred,” said Dunning. “For the times that you aren’t just using it for school.”