How to get a start page _and_ blank new tabs
 

I just had the idea how it is possible to have a certain start page that is loaded [i]only[/i] when you start OW, not when you open new tabs.

- Choose your "normal" workspace that isn't automatically saved.
- Load the page you'd like to set as your start page.
- Click Workspace -> Take snapshot (I think that's how the menu item is called in English).
- In the preferences, set your start page to "Blank".

From now on, OW will start with the snapshot you took if you quitted it while the workspace you chose above was active. And yes, the "snapshot" is (or at least seems to be—works with the Google personalized start page) not static, it will reload dynamic pages on startup. Additionally, newly created tabs will be blank.

I thought I'd post that solution here, as many people (including myself) wanted to have a certain start page, but blank new tabs. Works great! :-)

Another option would be if someone can host their own web page. On the first launch of OW, have a page as the start page that checks to see if a cookie is there. If it's not, set cookie named (for example) start. So when you load that "start page" again, it will see the cookie and do something different based on that result. It could be set as a session variable that goes away when OW restarts, or as a persistent cookie and have OW clear it when it restarts.

The result is, if OW has not already been to that page since the last launch it goes to one page. In this case, a start page. If it has already been to that page, you could just send it to a blank page.

There's other ways to do that as well.