I had it all nicely set, so any time I opened a new time in Firefox, it went right to Google.
About a week ago, that changed. Now, a new tab is just blank, and I have to hit the “home” icon to open Google.
Now, yeah, okay, Wah, I have to click two times instead of once, “First World Problems,” and my favorite brand of salad dressing is 20 cents a bottle more expensive than it used to be… But…
They had a nice feature, and took it away.
Is there a fix?
Changing the new tab page was an undocumented feature that was being hijacked by malware, so they changed how it works. They made it where you had to be extension to change it–since they can monitor extensions to make sure they don’t contain malware.
In short, install New Tab Override and you’ll get the feature back.
Personally, I’m just surprised anyone uses the default New Tab functionality at all. I always just type in a URL and then middle click on the -> button to open a new tab.
New Tab Override was easy to install…but new tabs still come up blank. How do I tell Firefox what I want to use as a default?
(I’d done it before by going into about:config and altering browser:newtab:url Those settings are still there, but don’t work any more, even with New Tab Override.)
(I can’t help it… I’m old… I wish they wouldn’t change things so much…)
Never mind: now it’s started working. How odd!
Thank you for pointing me to New Tab Override!
ETA: seconds later: nope! Stopped again! I think I’ve got Poltergeists!
I use FF, and get a page which is an amalgam of all of my recent and frequently used pages-along with a search bar for Google to use.
Don’t know what the issue is. I looked at the addon’s code, and it’s pretty straightforward. It should work. Maybe try deleting the old pref entirely to make sure that’s not causing a conflict. (Right-click on it and choose “Reset.”)
The only other thing I could think it would be is if you have another extension that is also trying to set the page, but you’d think that would have been a problem before. Still, go through your addon list and see if any other extensions may try to provide the same feature.
Well, that or a corrupted profile that isn’t saving correctly. You can always try refreshing Firefox, but then you’ll have to add all your addons back. (Pretty much anything else of importance, like your history or bookmarks, will be fine.)
I’ll try refreshing. I don’t believe I have any addons I care anything for.
Thanks!
Why on Earth would you ever feel the need to go to Google’s home page? You can search straight from the address bar. Just type your search terms right in. Having a “Google” tab or worse, an add-on for that, is just nonsense.
That was an innovation Chrome had from the get-go years and years ago, but Firefox copied it soon after. To think that anyone would still be searching any other way is just downright barbaric.
ETA: after booting up Firefox, which I hardly ever use, it looks like by default they also still have a totally superfluous “Search” box in addition to the address bar, but searches from the address bar work just fine. All this extra bloaty crap is why I switched to Chrome long ago and never looked back.
It’s convenient, it’s the way I like it, and that’s pretty much that.
Don’t tell me what I want. I know what I want. Tell me how to get what I want. That’s what customized menus and settings are for.
It’s not as convenient as simply typing your query straight into the address bar like a civilized person. 
I mean if what you want is to live like a caveperson, maybe you should just go back to using Netscape Navigator.
To be honest, I don’t know how any can stand using a single bar. You lose out on history and bookmark search, as you just get search autocomplete. And you get like six suggestions.
And if you want to talk primitive, look at the tab bar of Chrome. One row, and it just keeps getting smaller. Firefox by default will let you scroll, and you can get an addon that can give you multiple rows.
And you can keep your tabs open and restart the browser, and Firefox is smart enough not to try to load every tab at once. With Chrome, you can set it to keep your tabs loaded, but then your computer basically freezes for five minutes when you restart.
Oh, and addon developers have to pay $5 to be able develop addons. for Chrome. Hence why there’s no decent text scaling addon that remotely compares with NoSquint. There’s just an old one from 2009 that barely works. And that’s just one of many addons I couldn’t find a replacement for.
So there are quite a lot of reasons to keep using Firefox over Chrome. Not being Chrome doesn’t mean being outdated. Hell, Chrome has kept its UI pretty much the same since it started–you could argue it’s the outdated one.
I actually enjoy seeing the occasional Google Doodle.
The address bar doesn’t show me that if I’m on some other page.
–G!
I like having google for the home page, it’s nice and clean and the doodles are a welcome bonus. The new tab thing is a pain in the ass, I set it so it comes up with a blank but it would be nice to get your home page.
That’s silly. The address bar is for addresses. It’s where you type “Straight” and Firefox auto-fills “http://www.straightdope.com”. It would be absurd to start typing, “How much wood would a wood-chuck chuck” there.
Firefox has a separate “search” box, and that seems to work, but it doesn’t display partial results or suggestions, or suggest corrections to my spelling errors, etc., the way the Google home-page does.
So…in addition to being unnecessarily snarky, you have made suggestions that are significantly inferior to what I want from my Browser…and, in fact, what I used to have before Firefox changed.
Err… no, that’s exactly how it works; nothing absurd about it. Try it. That’s how searches work now and have since Chrome launched in 2008. Having multiple search boxes is utterly pointless. Far more pointless to actually open a new tab, go to google.com, and type in a search there, when you have a perfectly viable search bar built in (the address bar). Why have extra boxes and extra search pages? They are totally superfluous, which has been my point all along.
The modern way of searching is far superior. I can’t wrap my mind around how someone can be so unable to comprehend the address bar also having the function of a search that they insist on adding in extra steps, extra boxes, etc. just to cling to ancient ways of doing things.
I’d have to open a new tab anyway, otherwise I lose what I’m viewing now.
When the new tab automatically displayed a search window, that was great. It gave me what I wanted.
Your point is…pointless to me. Firefox did something I liked, and then stopped, and that cheeses me. (I could’a opened this thread in the Pit… @%##* Firefox…)