New Tab in Home Page: You can modify Firefox with an extension, though I personally would not want that at all, before dismissing a tab I make sure there is nothing in the tab in a backward direction, and would consider looking at anything but a blank page for a new tab as a distracting encumbrance but you can do what you ask for.

with the following:

• NewTabURL :: Add-ons for Firefox
  https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/newtaburl/

Thanks for the response, dmrichie. I will take a look at your suggestion.  :)

Just tried it and it didn't work...

However, this one did: New Tab Homepage 0.4.3

Here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/new-tab-homepage/