1530536 - "Homepage and new windows" breaks the ability to open a new window *without* home pages

Status: UNCONFIRMED

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

Description

[admin]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:65.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/65.0

Expected results:

All previous versions of Firefox have had TWO options for the home page setting:

1) Start with blank page
2) Start with home page(s)

"Homepage and new windows" in FF 65 now breaks that previous functionality by removing the option to have both home pages and a blank new window.

Is there a reason this functionality was removed? If NOT, please restore!

Comment 1

[Paul_B]

Hi reporter,

Thank you for taking the time to add this report. However, I was not able to reproduce the issue that you have mentioned.
In all the latest Firefox versions I still have 3 options for the "Homepage and new windows" settings: Home Page (Default) / Custom URL... / Blank page. ( I'll attach a screenshot of this ).

Could you please retest this using a new clean Firefox profile, maybe even safe mode, to eliminate custom settings as a possible cause (https://goo.gl/PNe90E) and report back the results? If the issue does still persist, could you please attach a screenshot/or short video of the issue?

Comment 2

[Paul_B]

Attachment: Homepage and new windows options.PNG

Comment 3

[Lee Lammert]

Yes that is correct. There is no way to open a new window [ith no content], and still have the Home button to navigate to your specified home pages.

The only option available now (the upgrade I did last week was 65, .. I believe the previous version was 60) is to:

1. Select a new window starts blank, .. the Home function has no effect (i.e. it just opens another blank window)

2. Have ALL new windows start with the defined home content (i.e. there i no way to open a window without the defined homecontent).

In FF v60, the Home and New specifications were separate, so one could open 10 blank windows that were actually blank, and still have the option to load the Home content if desired.

In essence, the Home button on the browser is now useless, as if Home content is defined, it will always appear in a new window.

Comment 4

[Lee Lammert]

Following up, .. Paul_B confirmed the problem with FF 65: there is no longer a way to open a blank window if the "Homepage and new windows" is set to home page content.

As this prevents USING Homepage content for many users, with no way to open a BLANK window, is there some reason why this regression test failure cannot be reversed?

Specifically, restoring the Homepage options that have been in place for 20 years (e.g. 60esr):

When Firefox starts:

• Home page
• Blank page

Home Page

• Current Pages
• Bookmark
• Restore to Default

By combining the New Window and Homepage settings in FF 65, one is effectively prevented from using homepage(s).

Comment 5

[Tim Spurway [:tspurway]]

Hey Aaron, Ed,

This is the use case: you set a custom URL for your home page, then set your homepage to Blank, then expect the Home button to navigate to the custom URL

I'm unsure that was a 'feature', even if pre-65 functionality in fact allowed you to do this. My question is should this bug be 'wontfix' or a 'regression'?

Comment 6

[Lee Lammert]

Hi Tim,

Firefox has allowed for both a home page and the choice to populate a new window WITH that homepage since earliest versions.

Sometime after v60, the ability to create a blank new window while still maintaining a set of pages that will be loaded with the "Home" button was removed by combining that functionality.

In essence, this change removes any use for the "Home" button.

Comment 7

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

The behavior changed in firefox 61 with bug 1448971 removing "When Firefox starts" UI. You can still set browser.startup.page to 0 to have new windows open a blank page while still letting the home button load a custom url.

I'll let aaron decide if there should be preferences UI to allow users to open a blank page on new windows.

Comment 8

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

Attachment: firefox 60 preferences

Here's the old UI for reference which incorrectly implies that it only affects starting firefox behavior as it also changes new window behavior.

Comment 9

[Lee Lammert]

(In reply to Ed Lee :Mardak from comment #7)

The behavior changed in firefox 61 with bug 1448971 removing "When Firefox starts" UI. You can still set browser.startup.page to 0 to have new windows open a blank page while still letting the home button load a custom url.

I'll let aaron decide if there should be preferences UI to allow users to open a blank page on new windows.

FYI, Just tested browser.startup.page = 0 in 66.0.5, .. a new window still shows the configured home pages.

Comment 10

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

Attachment: regular new window with pref = 1 then 3x blank window with pref = 0

Comment 11

[Drew Parsons]

I can confirm that setting browser.startup.page = 0 works successfully in Firefox 94.0 (Linux). With it set to 0, new windows now open blank as intended, while home page is defined separately (browser.startup.homepage) and can be accessed by clicking on the home button.

This is a spectacularly obscure config setting, available only to those who managed to find this bug report and read to the bottom.

Please fix the UI layout (Setting->Home = about:preferences#home ) so that the current "Homepage and new windows" is split into two separate settings, Homepage distinct from new window.

The UI is particularly broken with the combined "Homepage and new windows" since if you deliberately set browser.startup.page = 0 and after that set the Homepage using the UI, then browser.startup.page gets set to 1, completely ignoring the manual setting that you had given it.

Comment 12

[jayjayjazz]

After 3 years: Is there any new information on this :daleharvey?

Other browsers do have this functionality separated, so that a user can define a blank page, when the browser is started and have set a "homepage", for the home button.

Comment 13

[Dale Harvey (:daleharvey)]

I don't know of any

Comment 14

[Lee Lammert]

The missing functionality is now present in 91.6.

Comment 15

[jayjayjazz]

(In reply to Lee Lammert from comment #14)

The missing functionality is now present in 91.6.

Can you elaborate? How to configure?

Comment 16

[Lee Lammert]

<Settings><Home Page>

BOTH options are now present in 91.6.1esr (64-bit), ..

Comment 17

[Drew Parsons]

(In reply to Lee Lammert from comment #16)

<Settings><Home Page>

BOTH options are now present in 91.6.1esr (64-bit), ..

Not in 98.8 it isn't. It's still stuck with the single "Homepage and new windows" option in Settings, not differentiated into two separate options.