See the article below.

• How to set the home page

I did that and they show up in the tabs is there a way to make them show a preview box actually on the main screen?

What do you mean in a preview box? DO you want it to load in a sidebar? Or have you looked for a addon on addons.mozilla.org that can do what you need.

When I hit the + sign up by the tabs to get the tab page view and the boxes show up that is what i mean by preview box. Some show the link or site or whatever but my gmail and calandar don't show. i have to click on them to get to see anything. I like when I could see/preview my mail, calendar, weather, maps etc all on my home page. Dosen't seem like anyone offers it anymore.

If you had set up an iGoogle page (http://www.google.com/ig), Google is shutting down that service in a couple of months. There are many new services springing up to be your home page, but I don't know whether any of them work with your Google data. I'm pretty sure you will need a separate service, though, because Firefox doesn't have a built-in feature to pull all that data together.

Whoops, fixed the typo in the URL

Google is doing everything it can, in every way it can, to push people onto Chrome. One way is make it very inconvenient to use other browsers.

heck, i just wanted the maps link. a few years back you could, just like yahoo, embed all kinds of cool stuff in your customized homepage. all that has been 'retired'.

My solution is to resist, find work-arounds, and continue to support community-based software. For example, you could put a folder with all the handy links on your browser bookmarks toolbar, and while that's not a preview, its a click or two from getting the info you desire.

iGoogleAlternatives: http://www.igooglealternatives.info/