Make Hotmail your homepage in Firefox (Mozilla)
If you want to directly open your Hotmail inbox when you launch Firefox, you just need to add it as homepage: since the latest versions of Mozilla Firefox (and SeaMonkey, another web browser suite by Mozilla) support multiple tabs in the same window, they also support having several homepages at the same time: this means that you can either have Windows Live Hotmail as your sole homepage, or have it as one of the several "homepage tabs" you want.
Set Hotmail as homepage in Firefox
Follow these steps to add Hotmail as your homepage or one of your home tabs in Mozilla Firefox:
- If needed, start by launching Mozilla Firefox. Then, type in the address bar or otherwise navigate to www.hotmail.com or www.live.com and login to your Windows Live Hotmail account.
- Do not bookmark the Hotmail sign in screen: instead, after you login, go to the email folder you want to automatically load when you launch Firefox (presumably your inbox). If you have chosen to make the sign in screen automatically remember your email address and password, bookmarking your inbox as homepage means that it (inbox) will directly open as homepage.
- On Windows or Linux, go to the Tools menu, and choose "Options"; on Mac OS X, click on the Firefox menu, and choose "Preferences". In either case, the Firefox options / preferences dialog will open: make sure that the "General" tab is selected.
Tip - in the latest versions of Mozilla Firefox, which do not show the "classic menus" by default, click on the "Firefox" menu, select the "Options" submenu, and choose "Options":
- Click on the "Use Current Pages" button or type a pipe character ("|") and paste the URL (web address) of your Hotmail inbox inside the "Home Page" text field to simply add Hotmail as a homepage, in addition to existing home tabs you may have setup.
- Click OK to accept your new homepage settings.
This is all it takes to add your Windows Live Hotmail inbox as homepage or one of your home tabs in Firefox (the procedure is nearly identical in SeaMonkey, another browser by Mozilla).
Tip: from time to time, Hotmail will ask you to login again, just as a security measure; this can either be the full Hotmail sign in screen, or just a password confirmation text field before loading your inbox. This is normal, and designed to make sure that if you accidentally left yourself signed in to your Hotmail account on someone else's computer, it won't stay that way for too long!
New Hotmail, MSN Hotmail, Windows Live Hotmail & Live email are all referring to the same free webmail service offered by Microsoft and Windows Live Team (works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X). Microsoft Corporation, Apple, and other companies own the copyright or trademark to these and other terms mentioned.