I'm not aware of any built-in way to do that. It's interesting that these are so different: * New window: cursor moves to the page, and the page can move it wherever it likes * New tab in existing window: cursor moves to the address bar and the page's efforts to move the cursor within the page are ignored There might be an add-on to take control of this. I haven't heard of one for the home page, but you could check here: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/extensions/ As a short term workaround, you can use any of these keyboard shortcuts to move the cursor to the address bar if you are planning to type there anyway: * Ctrl + L * Alt + D * the F6 function key

Try this extension: *Custom New Tab: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/custom-new-tab/