1469031 - Opening a new tab doesn't open the homepage

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1266837

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect)

Description

[hula36]

Attachment: CONFIG-SNAP.jpeg

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.12; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0
Build ID: 20180605171542

Steps to reproduce:

I set my HOME PAGE to https://startpage.com


Actual results:

Firefox opens to https://startpage.com, but if I open a new tab, it goes to Firefox's default page showing TOP SITES, RECOMMENDED SITES and HIGHLIGHTS.  


Expected results:

I expect my prefered HOME PAGE to show up in NEW TABS. As is, in about:config, search "home" there are preferences showing up named "browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID", "browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone" "startup.homepage_override_url" "startup.homepage_override_url" - WHAT THE ***** IS THAT? IF MOZILLA HAS BUILD OVERRIDES TO PREFERENCES INTO BROWSER THAT IS MESSED UP!  OUT ETHICS! Why is there any "OVERRIDE" PREFERENCE IN CONFIG?  I REFRESHED FIREFOX AND UPDATED FIREFOX FROM 59 TO 60 AND SAW THESE IN BOTH!
I'LL LET MOZILLA DECIDE ABOUT "SECURITY"  ISSUE.

Comment 1

[Gingerbread Man]

It's currently intended behavior for the homepage to only be shown when starting Firefox and when opening a new window.

For new tabs, your only other built-in option is a blank page. You can set this in about:preferences#home. To load a custom link instead, you can use an add-on like
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/new-tab-override/

It's unclear to me whether bug 1458933 will change this.

The aforementioned preferences have to do with opening "what's new" pages when starting Firefox for the first time after an upgrade.
https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-release/search?q=browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID
https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-release/search?q=browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone
https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-release/search?q=startup.homepage_override_url