Share Your Thoughts on the Home / "New Tab" Page! 🖥️ [thread 2]

[Justine]

Hi everyone 👋

I'm Justine, a product manager on the Firefox Desktop team! It's been a while since we last reached out for your invaluable feedback on the homepage, and as part of our effort to develop and enhance the experience, I wanted to open a new thread to hear your thoughts, ideas, and pain points.

Here are some questions we'd love to get your feedback on:

• How do you feel about the default homepage, and what improvements would enhance it for you?
• What, if any, type of content would you be interested in seeing on the homepage?
• Is there something on another browser's homepage that you wish Firefox had as well?
• Do you use third-party websites or extensions as your homepage? If so, what motivates your choice?

Your sentiments, suggestions, and insights are important to us. Whether it's a simple thought or a detailed message, we'd love to hear your from you!

If you are a MOBILE user and would like to provide feedback on that experience, please do so in this thread: Mobile Homepage Experience - Thread

[Justine]

I'll make sure I pass this feedback to the appropriate team 😊

[LMP]

Also, a friend of mine is a senior developer and he mentioned that it makes no sense that FF is running massive memory on tabs that are not active. In fact, even if I only have one tab active and others are fully closed but sit in potential reload position, the Task Manager shows many tabs running in the background that are not even active or open...  I also don't understand when I have ALL tabs closed, no reload tabs waiting in the background, and I open ONE tab - Task Manager will soon show as if 12, 15, 20 tabs are running and you only have one single tab.

FF is a massive CPU and memory hawk and people have pointed this out for so many years yet nothing is ever done to improve on it.

[old-guy]

Thunderbird is a great product that I've been using I guess since Eudora turned to crap. I've never commented on past changes because I'm one of the many who never get around to contributing.

I like being able to view more incoming e-mail subject lines. That's useful.

Highlighting the number of number of unread e-mails in each folder is ridiculous! It hits me in the head like a 2x4 when I just glance at the page. Message counts now are the single most visible item on the screen. (I know I have tens of thousands of e-mails, but I wouldn't have that many if there were good automatic archiving and message cleanup tools.)

While I'm at it, please bring back the dropdown get-message account selection. Now I have to click twice to get messages from any account I'm not in at that moment.

Thanks very much for all your hard work! 

[Piestor]

Gentilissima Justine, premettendo che non ho molta conoscenza e praticità nell'utilizzo di Thunderbird ed è la prima volta che scrivo, desidero esprimere il mio più vivo disappunto per le modifiche apportate nell'ultima versione. Per quanto mi riguarda hanno reso molto più complicata la semplicità della sua gestione. Capisco che bisogna sempre migliorare, ma peggiorare no.

[CubeOfCheese]

I would like to be able to put the shortcut links into a grid. Really it would be cool to be able to put them anywhere on the page similar to android home page app grid. It's not a big deal but I think it would be nice.

Also I would like the option to access them with keyboard shortcuts if that's not already a thing

[Justine]

Thank you for this feedback! Improving customization options are definitely a part of the future vision.

[bev]

Please leave Firefox alone.  Note what happened with TB 115. It's a disaster.  Leave it all alone. You reach a point where its perfect and you cannot improve. Why do you try?  Been using these 2 programs for years and love them until new "updates" come and its all revamped.

[MrZipp]

I see what others are looking for. Please remember, though, that some of us PREFER a BLANK page with customized tabs. And nothing else is really needed. As long as this remains an option, I support all of the great suggestions that appeal to the large legion of Happy Firefoxers!

[Meldrew]

Frankly, I don't like it. It all looks too cramped on my screen although it leaves a large space at the bottom. Maybe other people will view it differently. It also screwed up my downloading of one of my email addresses that required the password again and I couldn't remember it. Hopefully I have over come that now, but it seems like it was not fully beta-tested before its release.  I don't know yet what other features you have included, but I was quite happy with the system before and didn't request this upgrade. 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' comes to mind. 

[PAR]

Thank you for your invitation to comment. 

I confess I do not entirely like the new Thunderbird home page. The previous version was perfectly acceptable and adequate, so why change it?   I had no choice, since it appeared unannounced after a recent software update. The two items I most dislike visually are the fixed search header bar that appears automatically as an over-prominent white rectangle and that horrid little cloud 'get messages' symbol - a retrograde step.

I appreciate the desire/need periodically for new features, especially to improve functionality, but mere cosmetic tweaks can be distractive and unwelcome and can easily appear as 'change for change's sake' without any obvious user benefit.  Sometimes simplicity and ease of use can instead be compromised.  As not everyone likes or wants new features, perhaps the standard approach with updates should always be to offer an option to toggle them on/off or revert to an earlier version.

PS: I can't find how to stop messages being sorted into threads - a useful feature for some, but, again, not always for everyone or all the time.

Thank you.

PaulR

[Jon]

Hey @PAR, 

This thread is specifically for the Firefox home/"new tab" page.

But I'll be sure to share your feedback with the Thunderbird team.

[bev]

I am reluctant to update my Firefox seeing what happened to Thunderbird 115  can I ask this forum  is it safe?   I can't deal with 2 issues if it is I will just postpone Firefox update which I have since seeing TB 115.   Would appreciate feedback on the Firefox question.  But for now no update for me.

[uggcantstandit]

I think the homepage is very good.

I customized it by limiting it to 6 personalized shortcut icons under the search bar which frankly I never use. Firefox adds 2 new ones based on my browsing history. I wish they wouldn't do that.

These icons for me are needless clutter as I have a nicely organized series of bookmarks that I have placed on the sidebar, which opens up on the homepage and all new tabs.

I also like the ability to change the color of the Homepage to dark because I don't want bright lights at night. My sidebar Bookmarks toolbar however remains bright white. I wish I could make its background dark as well.

The only extra I wouldn't mind having is a weather widget- say a 7 day forecast for my area.

Thank you! I love Firefox and love the primary password feature. I read various opinions that the primary password isn't secure but I love it.

[Justine]

Thank you for detailing out what you currently are enjoying, as well as what you'd like to see. We have talked about bringing widgets to the homepage, so it's nice to hear the echoed here 😊

[Kaoxt]

I would like Firefox - Android to behave like iOS does or even Chrome - android for selecting links on homepage. It keeps the desired link you select on the same tab. For Firefox - Android it keeps opening a new tab. I'd love for this to be corrected.

[eastbigwood]

suggestion： could you please add one more function that when we copy some words from website can choose to copy as plain text mode ?

[VeganFox]

It would be cool if it had a simple local RSS widget. It would be enough to just show titles and the site.

[VeganFox]

It would also be nice if the Firefox logo could show with just the shortcuts, but without the search bar ( I like to show my Firefox pride 🙂 )

[Justine]

Thank you to everyone for such an insightful conversation over the last two and a half months! I've logged each and every one of them, and have noted them or passed it to the appropriate team.

The two biggest takeaways from your feedback are:

• A desire to have more ways to customize the homepage experience, including adding widgets, news feeds, and advanced shortcut options
• Wallpapers and theme selection is a desired feature that you see on other browsers, and would like replicated for Firefox

We also had comments around:

• Improvements to the settings
• Accessibility
• and branding!

I hope to continue this conversation as we add new features and provide a more tailored experience. Until then, just know that we value your ideas and opinions, and are looking to sharing more soon!

Best,

Justine

[Jon]

Hey all,

Thanks so much for participating and sharing such valuable insights. We are closing out the thread but want to encourage you to continue sharing your feedback and ideas about the home/"New Tab" page (and others topics too) in new posts—just be sure to use the necessary labels and tags, so your posts are easily searched for and discovered by our teams.

Also, we are excited to announce that a new discussion hosted by a Firefox Product Manager has just kicked off and can be found here: Share your thoughts on how you shop online! 

This will be an ongoing series here in the Mozilla Connect community, so we look forward to continuing to collaborate with you all 😀

[Jon]

Hey all,

Thanks so much for participating and sharing such valuable insights. We are closing out the thread but want to encourage you to continue sharing your feedback and ideas about the home/"New Tab" page (and others topics too) in new posts—just be sure to use the necessary labels and tags, so your posts are easily searched for and discovered by our teams.

Also, we are excited to announce that a new discussion hosted by a Firefox Product Manager has just kicked off and can be found here: Share your thoughts on how you shop online! 

This will be an ongoing series here in the Mozilla Connect community, so we look forward to continuing to collaborate with you all 😀

[Jon]

Hey all,

Thanks so much for participating and sharing such valuable insights. We are closing out the thread but want to encourage you to continue sharing your feedback and ideas about the home/"New Tab" page (and others topics too) in new posts—just be sure to use the necessary labels and tags, so your posts are easily searched for and discovered by our teams.

Also, we are excited to announce that a new discussion hosted by a Firefox Product Manager has just kicked off and can be found here: Share your thoughts on how you shop online! 

This will be an ongoing series here in the Mozilla Connect community, so we look forward to continuing to collaborate with you all 😀

[Jon]

Hey all,

Thanks so much for participating and sharing such valuable insights. We are closing out the thread but want to encourage you to continue sharing your feedback and ideas about the home/"New Tab" page (and others topics too) in new posts—just be sure to use the necessary labels and tags, so your posts are easily searched for and discovered by our teams.

Also, we are excited to announce that a new discussion hosted by a Firefox Product Manager has just kicked off and can be found here: Share your thoughts on how you shop online! 

This will be an ongoing series here in the Mozilla Connect community, so we look forward to continuing to collaborate with you all 😀