Let's Chat About the Firefox New Tab Page!

[akashm]

Hi everyone!

I’m Akash, a Product Manager who works on Firefox Desktop, and I’m excited to open a new thread of ideas with you all - the Firefox New Tab Page!

As we continue to build a modern & engaging browser, we’d love to hear from you on what you find important when choosing a browser. Let’s get started!

How can we improve the Firefox New Tab page so you have a more enjoyable experience?

I’d love to know…

• What do you enjoy about the current Firefox New Tab experience?
• What are the gaps that currently exist on the Firefox New Tab page that if fixed, would make it better for you? What do you wish you could do that you can’t do today?
• You don’t have Firefox New Tab set as your default homepage? Tell us why!
• What are your specific use cases when using the Firefox New Tab page?

Looking forward to hearing from you all, and welcome to Mozilla Connect!

[moz_samri]

You need to be able to control, the priv level of new tabs, opened by yourself (R-Click) or by external links.

cf., At present clicking on a PDF (set to open in FF), forces a tab to be opened in a non-protected window.   That allows it to become part of history !   User should have a preference setting to allow it to only open in PrivateWindow..     There is  also no way to open a tab in a container tab, in the current version.  One clearly should be able to rClick a link and say "Open in Container Tab of my choice", else what good are container tabs !   Container tabs are not linkable from current home-page settings..  They appear to be NOT saved anywhere once opened...

A MAJOR FF issue is NOT allowing feedback like this email response...
I would give more feedback, if you would open up the process,, perhaps like a "feedback" link in Settings...

There is a setting, but required logging in each time...

[akashm]

Thanks for your feedback @moz_samri !

This is a great idea! While I can't promise any deliverables, tab management is definitely an area we're looking to ensure is as seamless as possible.

Your feedback is much-appreciated and valuable to us, so I would encourage you to continue to give feedback on Mozilla Connect!

[Nik29]

I'm happy with the current Firefox and the new tabs. However, when I add a shortcut, if there are less than eight, a blank icon will be created. There is no problem with usability, but it does not seem to be very good if you care about the appearance. I think that it can be improved by changing it to one big + button like other browsers or adding a + button next to the edit button of the last shortcut that is set.

[akashm]

Thanks for the feedback, @Nik29!

This has been a recurring theme, and while I can't promise any outcomes or deliverables, I'll be sure to make note of your suggestions here.

[Guest]

new thought about this: I don't really use the tiles often. most times I arrive at the new tab page via keyboard: Ctrl+t when opening a new tab or windows+1 when launching Firefox. there's no indication that anything on the new tab page is keyboard accessible. so almost always I proceed by typing a destination and letting the address bar pull up the frequent/recent thing I wanted.

I think the only time I get there by mouse is when opening a new container tab, which doesn't have a keyboard way to do it

[Catemaco]

I want to be able to set a single page as my new tab page.  Maybe my online calendar page, so that I would see the reminders that only pop up when it's open.  Maybe a long article that I want to finish.  Or an exercise video, to remind me to stand up and move once in a while. 

Yes, I know there are other ways to do this, but it's my new tab page, right?  Why shouldn't I be able to set it to what I want?  We used to be able to do that.

I often peruse the Pocket articles, and have enjoyed reading some of them, but I also find it very distracting.  I open a new tab to look for something specific and wander down a Pocket rabbit hole.

[Ponda]

As it happens I’m in the middle of an effort to make my interface look like people thought it was going to 40 years ago (for dark mode; I still use light mode during the day, but it’s impossible to make it look more futuristic). With Firefox, I’m trying to achieve it by using nightTab, which is great for this purpose. I used Tabliss before and it was really nice, although in different way. I don’t really use shortcuts, except for an old laptop I use to turn “just a TV” into “smart TV” when I want to and sometimes on mobile, without customisation. Bookmarks toolbar, however, is used extensively for websites I won’t open on mobile (Discord) or when I want to send tabs to desktop, but I know I won’t make use of them immediately after switching devices. It’s a pity this toolbar is invisible in fullscreen mode, I would certainly use this mode more often if the toolbar could be enabled.

I don’t think I would use news if they were on a new tab page (although I have a feeling I would enable it and scroll through headlines about once a day). Two widgets that would make my day are privacy-friendly weather and RSS feeds with sync. For the later, I used Thunderbird but no sync was a dealbreaker; I switched to Pocket+qiip.it, but I’m not happy and I’m looking for alternatives. I’m quite certain I will come back to Thunderbird as soon as this feature is implemented on Android app, unless Firefox implements it properly. On the other hand when it comes weather I don’t really use anything – I open Ventusky when I really need to check it. Speed is also important, but when it comes to less powerful devices I’m happy to make trades (less widgets and features).

[JamesBond007]

Hello Akash. Thankyou for replying to us and asking us what we want, what we dislike, etc., and all the other things you asked us.

I've been using Firefox ever-since version 2.0 (I tried it when it was 1.0 but it was kind-of buggy, so I waited until it was more stable and less-buggy-and-glitchy), whereas a cousin of mine has been using it ever since it was "Firebird".

I want to tell you that I always have the "new tab"-page set as a completely blank and empty page. I don't use the "suggestions" nor the "search"-box nor any of the other stuff that is in the Firefox "new tab"-page. Yes I know that there are other people that do use that stuff but I don't. To each their own.

Ever-since Firefox started adding stuff to the "new tab"-page I would go to the "about:config" thingy and change the "new-tab"-page to a completely blank and empty page. And ever since those settings appeared in the "Menu bar > Edit > Settings" thingy (ie. I was trying to describe the menu-option you go to to go to Firefox's settings to change them), I would change the settings of the Firefox "homepage" and the " "new tab" page" to be a completely blank and empty page.

Please [Firefox/Mozilla] do-not remove this option from us 😞

[lovelyjubbly]

Bit late reply but anyway. I don't use the new tab features, instead preferring to look at nice photos, treating it like a wallpaper space. I use this add-on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/mendhak-flickr-new-tab/

[teremenk]

[Luca_Pavan]

Actually I don't like that clicking on the writing field under Firefox logo when I start typing it suddently start writing on the address and searh bar, the active Use the address bar for searches and navigation option shouldn't prevent the user to write on the selected field, otherwise that search bar under the logo would be useless. Or, when that option is active, you can set that the search bar under the logo isn't loaded, at least this way you'll give some more space to Shortcuts and Recent activity.

[akashm]

Hello @Luca_Pavan ! Thanks for the feedback!

Your feedback is well-noted and is something I'll pass along to our teams to have a look at!

[Anonymous]

If the feature forcing people to watch the news is being considered, I strongly oppose it. Many people, including myself, are so distressed by the recent news that we are forced to close our eyes to protect ourselves.

[akashm]

Thank you for your feedback @Anonymous!

[Anonymous]

@akashmI would like to hear your opinion.

[Ikarus720]

With regards to tab management, I'd love to see something similar to what Brave does with tabs where you can add them to a group (no limit on the number of groups that I'm aware of) and then easily expand/collapse groups to reduce the tab clutter in your browser window. I've looked at several of the addons available, but none of them offer this elegant solution. 

[akashm]

Hello @Ikarus720 , thank you for your feedback!

We will certainly keep this in mind when we look at tab management!

[Ghimbo21]

I like how clean the new tab can be, only a search bar and your websites and nothing else. Something I hate about the other browsers are the way they feed you with content you don't really want to see, it's really distracting.

But one thing I would like to see is some way to set a custom background image without having to create a custom CSS for the profile. I feel like this is something important to customize the experience.

(Also, I always like to set the custom CSS with some blur behind the search bar and the icons, it looks nice with a background 😄 )

[BeeZok]

As much as I appreciate the sentiment behind Pocket, I've found so much more utility in the locally personalized RSS feed I've seen elsewhere (keeping in mind that they too have private ads monetizing the feed). I don't use them anymore for many reasons, but it's something I'd love to see implemented into the Firefox new tab page.

[UnoSantos]

My biggest issue is with the amount of tiles/shortcuts on a row. I don't really need that many (I have 5 pinned) and I would prefer that my history doesn't fill up the rest.

Second issue is with thumbnails for said shortcuts - they either look bad/dated or most often don't show up at all so I have to manually set them.

I also don't like the workflow for setting these shortcuts up - I would much prefer a workflow where I set a custom amount of pages to my home screen in some settings panel, save it and have the new tab page only with search bar and icons of the previously set web pages whether there is 3 of them or 50 of them. This way you can also remove unnessecary clutter (the pin icon, the edit button on hover).

[Jon]

Thanks again to all for sharing this feedback! We will be closing out this discussion in a few days and getting ready to kick off the next one, which will be about Privacy & Security. Stay tuned 😃 

[akashm]

Hey there! 👋

First and foremost, thank you for all of your feedback throughout the past few weeks! As an organization, we’re always looking for ways to improve your experience with Firefox. Your feedback helps guide our decisions, and with your participation we see Firefox through your eyes!

We’ve learned a ton about the Firefox New Tab page over the past few weeks. We learned about what you love about it, how you use it, when you use it, how often you use it, and where you see areas for improvement. Some common areas for improvement that came up were related to:

• New Tab Wallpapers/Backgrounds (this was very, very popular!)
• News/RSS feeds
• Firefox Statistics via Dashboard
• Tab Management
• Widgets
• Improving Shortcuts & Top Sites
• Search Engine Improvements

It’s exciting that these themes were brought up by multiple individuals! While we can’t commit to any deliverables at the moment, this gives the team a lot of insight into where we can begin to improve the Firefox New Tab experience.

Once again, thank you for your participation on this thread! We look forward to providing you with more updates around these themes in the future. 🎉

Cheers,
Akash

[Jon]

Wow, what a great discussion! Thanks to all for participating and providing so many valuable insights—this was our most active Product Manager-hosted discussion yet 👏

We are closing out this thread but want to encourage you to continue sharing your feedback and ideas about the Firefox New Tab page (and more) in new posts. Just remember to use the necessary labels and tags, so your posts are easily searched for and discovered by our teams

This is an ongoing series here in the Mozilla Connect community, and we have another discussion scheduled to kick off next week. If you have a request for a topic, send me a message and I'll reach out to the product and engineering teams to hopefully coordinate. We look forward to continuing to collaborate with you all 😀

-The Community Team