1096336 - For "FirefoxDev", fix how "about:blank" works to normal dev expectations

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, enhancement)

Description

[Kyle Simpson]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:36.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/36.0
Build ID: 20141101030205

Steps to reproduce:

There was a long discussion thread on #1032243 about weird expectation mis-match with how the FF UI handles "about:blank" and how I think most developers would expect. In particular, most of the subsequent messages starting around comment 17 here (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1032243#c17) are related to this present bug report.


Actual results:

The crux of the issue comes to these two quotes from the above linked thread:

* "But, again, we're optimizing the Firefox UI for users in general, not your students."

* "Again, that would defeat the purpose for most users.  Most users have never heard of about:blank."

Clearly, this was a non-dev centric viewpoint.

So, now that we've got a FFd edition, can we revisit some of these assumptions, and perhaps have the FFd experience more closely match dev expectations as well as the behavior seen in other dev-friendly browsers like Chrome?


Expected results:

Specifically, my requests from that thread would be (again, only for FFd):

1. Can "about:blank" and "about:newtab" both be shown in the URL address bar (instead of intentionally being hidden), so that the difference between them is more obvious -- in the case where a user has configured the about:newtab page to be almost entirely blank?

2. There's currently no UI setting for what your newtab URL should be. You have to go find it buried in about:config. Can we expose a "Open this URL for each new tab" setting in the preferences dialog, and let it have options for "about:blank", the "about:newtab" thingy, or any random URL?

3. Following on from (2), make it so that by default your newtab URL is "about:blank" -- I think most developers probably prefer that default than "about:newtab".

Comment 1

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

Not sure where the dev. edition bugs should be filed. dcamp, could you comment?

Comment 2

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

2019-03-06

This bug is part of a group of bugs which have had an open needinfo for at least 12 weeks.

The request for information has not been answered, and we can't move forward on the bug so we are closing it.

If the defect is still present, please reopen this bug with an updated report.