1266837 - New tab page settings should have "Load homepage" option

Status: REOPENED

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, enhancement, P3)

Description

[WBT]

When loading a New Tab, there is a gear/Settings icon in the upper right that when clicked opens "New Tab Controls" and allows me to load a blank page instead of the tiles in New Tab.  There is also a third option, "Learn about New Tab," which when clicked loads https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-tiles-new-tab in another new tab.

Before or after the "Show blank page" option, I'd like an option to "Load homepage."  My homepage is a more customized, usable (for me), and stable alternative to Firefox's tiles; others my with to always load some particular page which is for them a great place to start browsing.

Related bugs: 
Bug 1210290 at least seems to make a same/similar request but focus on Firefox for Android (this request is for non-Android FF), and then the discussion kind of gets off topic.  

Bug 1065424 goes the other way, for people who love the New Tab page so much they want to use that as their homepage.  Bug 1195861 suggests that such functionality is already in place, but buggy.

Workarounds:
There are a number of add-ons that provide at least most of the feature requested here, such as https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/new-tab-homepage/, but that one doesn't work when combined with TabGroupsManager and with the upgraded New Tab page, adding "load homepage" seems like a sensible UI option to integrate into the "vanilla" Firefox.  

One can also click the homepage icon to load the homepage, but we can make the process easier by loading it on each new tab (or rather, allowing the user that option).

Comment 2

[Jessilyn Davis]

Hello!

This bug has been closed due to inactivity and/or the potential for this bug to no longer be an issue with the new Discovery Stream-powered New Tab experience.

Please help us triage by reopening if this issue still persists and should be addressed.

Thanks!

Comment 3

[WBT]

I still strongly believe this should be an option, to load the homepage in a new tab. The "New Tab Homepage" extension somewhat solves this, but in my experience has only about a 50% success rate, with tabs otherwise opening blank.

Comment 4

[Jessilyn Davis]

Thanks, WBT!

Comment 6

[Andy Bajka]

Firefox desperately needs a third option to the New tabs drop down, this would be a Home Page option. This way if I set https://www.google.com/ as my Home Page when I click new tab (+) I would go to my home page selection.

====

Safari has the "New tabs open with" feature which allows selecting the Homepage.

Safari -> Preferences -> General -> New tabs open with

This exactly what Firefox needs as well.

====

Google Chrome also fails miserably in regards to new tab functionality. There's no way to have a new tab simply open https://www.google.com/ and have the cursor focused in the search box.

Comment 9

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S3. However, the bug has 4 duplicates.
:daleharvey, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 10

[BugBot (nomail) [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The last needinfo from me was triggered in error by recent activity on the bug. I'm clearing the needinfo since this is a very old bug and I don't know if it's still relevant.