1179593 - "Blank" new tab page should show about:blank

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect)

Description

[merfius]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:42.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/42.0
Build ID: 20150701030207

Steps to reproduce:

When the new tab page is set to "Blank page", a gear icon is still visible (and thus not blank), and about:blank styles are not respected.



Expected results:

New tab option should be moved to about:preferences, with selections for the New Tab (speed dial) page, about:blank, or custom selection.

Comment 1

[Wes Kocher (:KWierso) (Not reading bugmail; email directly if needed)]

Eh, if you accidentally click "Blank" instead of "Classic", you then have to go digging through the Preferences window/tab to get it back?

As a halfway compromise, I'd personally like it if about:blank styling just gets applied to about:newtab when it's set to blank.

Comment 2

[[:Towkir] Ahmed]

(In reply to Wes Kocher (:KWierso) from comment #1)
> Eh, if you accidentally click "Blank" instead of "Classic", you then have to
> go digging through the Preferences window/tab to get it back?
>    Yes, it will be tough for some users to find out how to get back the classic new tab.
> As a halfway compromise, I'd personally like it if about:blank styling just
> gets applied to about:newtab when it's set to blank.
     I agree with this too, but what if the gear icon is set to about:blank by default, so any user can get back the classic new tab ???

(a complete blank page can be somehow confusing to new users)

Comment 3

[merfius]

(In reply to Wes Kocher (:KWierso) from comment #1)
> Eh, if you accidentally click "Blank" instead of "Classic", you then have to
> go digging through the Preferences window/tab to get it back?
> 
> As a halfway compromise, I'd personally like it if about:blank styling just
> gets applied to about:newtab when it's set to blank.

As stated in the original post, the entire setting of Classic vs Blank should be moved to Preferences, so this wouldn't be a problem.

Not sure that suggested compromise would be possible, since about:blank doesn't have the settings gear.  It would be better to simply allow the user to choose what they want to see when they open a new tab.

Comment 4

[Patrick Storz]

The whole idea of setting "about:blank" as new tab page is to get a completely blank page, without having to load any content that might be available on "about:newtab".

Any compromise would spoil this target.

The user should always be able to set a real blank page as the new tab page... Basically you have to fix what was removed in bug 1118285

Comment 6

[john]

so this bug is getting swept under the rug?

new "Show blank page" is broken

i hate the flash i see every time i open a new tab

and the "zoom out" aminamition of the new tab page going away to the top right corner on first new tab for the session

"Show blank page" should be about:blank with a popup explaining to curious new users who clicked it by accident and want "Show your top sites" back that it can be found in preferences

or honestly just remove the gear icon (it confuses non computer people)
and move the gear options to preferences where they should be

GIVE US THE OPTION TO HAVE A BLANK NEW TAB not a half baked solution

Comment 7

[john]

or just change the current "Show blank page" background color to #FFFFFF (it's F9F9F9 atm)

Comment 8

[john]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1179593#c6
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1179593#c7
resolved in firefox developer 54

Comment 9

[john]

disregard last comment 8

behavior in previous posts is observed when browser.newtab.preload is set to false

Comment 10

[wojtek]

This is not resolved (and I think #1417742 is related).

The option "start with blank page" doesn't work with new tabs being opened. I was using for a long while "Home page" set to "about:blank" but that stopped working. IMHO "about:blank" in start page should be respected -- if someone puts that string there that person definitely knows what he's doing.

Comment 11

[Stephan Sokolow]

As a workaround pending a proper fix, it is possible to hide the undesired content by putting the following snippet in $PROFILE/chrome/userContent.css

@-moz-document url("about:newtab") {
    body { background-color: #ffffff !important; }
    body * { display: none !important; }
}


Doesn't do anything for the CPU or memory footprint of loading the unwanted content though.

Comment 13

[john]

@-moz-document url(about:newtab) {
  #newtab-customize-button,
  #onboarding-overlay-button {
    display: none;
  }
}

in userContent.css

Comment 14

[paul]

This is still not resolved in 61.0.

Comment 15

[Jawad Ahmed [:jawad]]

I think this is fixed, i cant reproduce.

Comment 16

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/message/reply/question/etc.)]

(In reply to Jawad Ahmed [:jawad] from comment #15)

I think this is fixed, i cant reproduce.

I can confirm this, it's no longer reproducible, probably due to new rewritten New Tab in Activity Streams. But if someone can still reproduce it in latest stable version of Mozilla Firefox, please feel free to reopen this bug.