How can I make the new tab page be blank on Firefox 13?

Question

Today I upgraded to Firefox 13, and I notice that the new tab page isn't blank anymore. Instead, it shows your history or most visited pages, kind of like chrome does. Anyway, I was wondering if it's possible to change it back. I looked through the different stuff in options but I don't see anything. Thanks.

Answer 1

There's a little square on the upper right of the tab page that says "Hide the new tab page" if you hover over it. If you click it, the tab page goes blank.

You can also disable the new tab page feature completely via the about:config page:

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/new-tab-page-show-hide-and-customize-top-sites#w_how-do-i-turn-the-new-tab-page-off

Answer 2

Some more detail from behind @jjlin's link, and personal experience:

To disable the "New Tab" page, you have a few options.

1. Click the little square/grid icon in the upper-right of the new page.
   • Used alone, this simply toggles browser.newtabpage.enabled. New tabs will still open about:newtab but will not display any content by default - the icon will remain available in the upper-right corner to turn the New Tab page back on.
2. Set browser.newtab.url to about:blank in about:config.
   • Used alone, this just points new tabs to about:blank every time. You will never see about:newtab again, nor will you have access to its content, unless you manually navigate to it via the Address Bar. Using this option will probably give a minor (likely imperceptible) performance boost to new tabs, since they never have to load a page that actually has any content at all.
3. Set browser.newtabpage.enabled to false in about:config.
   • Used alone, this has effects identical to option #1.

Any of the above options should provide the desired result and they may be used in combination with each other. All of the above changes take effect immediately - you can even see the effect of browser.newtabpage.enabled on tabs that are already open to about:newtab. No browser restart required.