New Tab/home page improvements

[KERR]

The current Firefox homepage/new tab page is quite minimal:

I think there's an opportunity to make it look better and have functionality like the other browsers do

• Include stats about blocked ads/trackers etc - Since FF is privacy focused, why not display info from about:protections front and center instead of hiding it!
•  Wallpaper (optional please!). Maybe users could set their own or FF could randomly show some
• Calendar or other widgets. Brave shows a clock (which is kinda redundant)
• Weather (if user allows location access)
• Some Firefox feeds/ticker. You could have "Did you know"s or good news stories about what Mozilla is doing/how they're helping the world. Could also advertise Mozilla VPN or T-shirts! Kodi (used to be XBMC) has one of these tickers.

Brave's new tab page below incl number of trackers/ads blocked, bandwidth and time saved:

Kodi RSS/news ticker:

Firefox's about:protections sadly not being shown off!

[tlzyiqleu]

Adding these thing will make Firefox become a bloatware just like Edge.

[kremlinbot]

Since the original thread is now dead, re-rollin my FFView New Tab integration here:

Key changes:

• The original Firefox View is no more -- now it's completely integrated into the New Tab; the tabbar button is gone as well.
• All the new widgets are located under current New Tab widgets. The new widgets include:
  • "Other Devices" -- shows (2n-1) recently synced tabs from other devices, pressing the "Show More" button expands it to up to 3n more elements (where n is the amount of rows that can be fitted into the screen, e.g. for the concept art above it will be 3).
  • "Recently Closed" -- shows 3 or 5 recently closed tabs, including their URL. Pressing the "Show More" button expands the lists to up to 10 elements.
  • "Recent Bookmarks" -- shows 3 or 5 recently bookmarked tabs, including their URL. Pressing the "Show More" button expands the lists to up to 10 elements.
• Pocket Recommendations widget is now 1 or 2 columns high, and is scrolled to the right, to make it easier to access the new widgets. There should probably be circled arrows navigation buttons (these ⧀ ⧁ things) to both show it can be scrolled that direction and allow scrolling by clicking on them.
• Every widget now can be collapsed, just life in FF View (not sure about this feature, considering user can disable unneeded widgets in New Tab settings)

[kremlinbot]

@steel835, love the movable widgets idea! It will also allow to easily merge New Tab with FF View, and while the concept is pretty rough, I can imagine it in the style of Firefox for Android new tab and it'll surely look amazing!

[Shad0w_57]

I totally agree, Firefox lacks really useful new features. Firefox View only displays the history of closed tabs and PDF editing can be done with other software. A little "Woaww" effect would not be missing for this browser. 

[Jon]

Hi all,

Back with an update...

This idea has been reviewed by our product team and we will be exploring it more—this means that we're looking into personalization features as part of our New Tab roadmap this year.

Related idea here: Wallpaper in new tab 

Feel free to continue the conversation here in the comments and stay tuned for updates.

Thanks!

-The Community Team

[Elado]

I would also want to choose my home page or/and other website displayed on a new tab.

Thanks

Elad

[ff7jhjc]

Literally every browser on the market sucks. Be a leader and not a follower and maybe your browser won't.

I don't want "sponsored stories" (aka, advertisements), I don't want what some intern at Pocket thinks is a "though provoking story," and I don't care about backgrounds. 

The home page should be about me and ONLY about me. Let users put any of that garbage they want on their home page, but also let me put a bookmark folder or favorites or something that actually matters to me on MY homepage so I can easily get to the sites I frequently visit.

Firefox used to be an innovator. Start being that again.