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How can I make first page loaded in new tab the first page in its history, instead of the "New Tab" page?

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Before Firefox 57.0, when a new tab was opened and then a page was loaded in that tab, that page became the first one in its history. Now, all new tabs have the New Tab page as the first page in their history. Although this seems like a trivial complaint, I like to quickly go back to the first page in a tab's history using the drop-down menu, and now I'm finding I have to be careful. I would rather not even see the New Tab page at all, but I certainly don't want it as part of the tab's history.

Before Firefox 57.0, when a new tab was opened and then a page was loaded in that tab, that page became the first one in its history. Now, all new tabs have the New Tab page as the first page in their history. Although this seems like a trivial complaint, I like to quickly go back to the first page in a tab's history using the drop-down menu, and now I'm finding I have to be careful. I would rather not even see the New Tab page at all, but I certainly don't want it as part of the tab's history.

All Replies (6)

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Did you find a solution for this? At least temporarily, you can switch from the new "Activity Stream" design for the new tab page back to the old design.

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful or accepting the risk.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste newt and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.enabled preference to switch the value from true to false

In the long run, that old page will be removed, so you might add a suggestion here: https://qsurvey.mozilla.com/s3/FirefoxInput/

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I had not tried this, but will. My workaround was to bookmark the page I wanted to be first in the tab's history, and then open the new tab by middle-clicking on the bookmark.

In any case, thanks for the suggestion, I will try it.

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Okay, I tried this and it did NOT work. The behavior on opening a new tab is the same as before: the first page loaded becomes the second page in the tab's history, after "New Tab".

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Sorry, I only tested on Firefox 57 on Windows, where the old new tab page behaves the old way, if that makes any grammatical sense.

Do you use any extensions that change how the new tab page works, such as New Tab Override or Custom New Tabs ?

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LastPass, NoScript, and SailPoint (now disabled) are the only extensions or add-ons that I use. Yahoo Mail installed something called Wider Mail recently (which I'm thinking of getting rid of as I don't know how it got there or what it does), but this issue goes back further than that.

BTW it seems strange that the way a Firefox config option works should be different on different platforms. Seems it should be platform independent, but then WTHDIK?

Modified by azuregrrrl

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None of those extensions sound as though they should affect the new tab page.

azuregrrrl said

BTW it seems strange that the way a Firefox config option works should be different on different platforms. Seems it should be platform independent, but then WTHDIK?

Usually, they work the same except where Microsoft and Apple have different platform guidelines or keys.