Mozilla is testing new tab wallpapers in desktop Nightly

Nemeski@lemm.ee to Firefox@lemmy.ml – 278 points –
i.imgur.com

about:config --> browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.newtabWallpapers.enabled true

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about:blank with a dark theme is the only new tab experience I will ever use.

Same. Who stares at an empty tab for more than 5 seconds? If I put a wallpaper, I'll barely see it.

The tab could have some other useful things... If Mozilla allowed some form of customization or extensibility. Big clock, weather, and the stuff they have right now (icons) are pretty useful too.

There's a reason UI/UX people design these things, and one day I'll figure out what it is.

I can see color being used to help encode themed tabs for the end user. Red theme for media tab groups, grey for research groups, etc. Might be cool

I mean shit, Linux people customize the absolute dick out of their computers down to fine tuning the kernel, and people are poo-pooing this?

I find it super distracting. The only reason I ever open a new tab is to search or enter a URL, so all I need is it to focus in the URL bar. Or I guess seeing open tabs on other devices, the new pinned tab thing they added solves that.

I'm okay with it existing, as long as there's an easy way to turn it all off. I use Brave for testing, and I dislike the new tab page there. My OS has a clock, and I can get OS widgets for everything else, I just want my browser to browse...

i sometimes use the shortcuts for sites i commonly visit

Why not just type the first few letters in the URL bar? For my lemmy instance, I just type "sh" and it completes. For everything else, I use Duckduckgo bangs ("!a" for Amazon, "!w" for Wikipedia, etc).

It should totally be an option, but I don't remember the last time I ever clicked on anything in the new tab page.

If you've just opened a new tab, your hand is on the mouse and the page you want is one click away, why bother typing?

Um, no? I type "Ctrl+T" (or Cmd+T) to open the new tab. I honestly don't know the last time I used the mouse to open a new tab.

Right, but you asked why not type it, I was giving you a reason why. That's also why I put in the disclaimer about having your hand on the mouse.

But it'll be just like on the desktop which I never see as well 😸

I mean I get that and I think many people on the Fediverse agrees, but I showed my girlfriend this picture with the red panda background and she's excited about this feature (and hence Firefox) because of a red panda.

Don't underestimate or undervalue catering to non-technical people. If we want Firefox to be adopted more widely, we need those people to enjoy the experience.

Same, probably, but I also appreciate the option.

I don't hate it, but the other options in the screenshot makes it seem like they're going for parity with Edge in terms of new tab customizability. I love my Firefox but over the long history of the project I feel like they've frequently chased the wrong trends.

Personally I always use the blank new tab page, so I bet this won't even work for me. 🙁

Same. I don't need anything on a new tab page, I just need to search in the URL bar. Maybe there'd be value if I could use the "tabs on other devices" thing as my new tab page.

about:firefoxview#syncedtabs takes you there if you have a way to set it as new tab.

Dang, it's not a quick setting in the UI, and using an extension didn't seem to work properly.

Maybe I'll raise that as a feature request, I think others may prefer that to having the separate "view" tab (ctrl/cmd + T is pretty convenient).

That's why I use tabliss - plus all the other customization and config.

I use Bonjourr new tab page already

I’m one of the devs, always nice to find users in the wild! 🔥

This comment inspired me to try out Bonjourr. Absolutely love it so far. Keep the great work up!

@neme They should organize the menus in one place and add more overall customization options instead. Seems they just randomly jump in different directions ignoring their core users.

I wonder if they'll implement stuff like this:

(Screenshot taken from the Android version of Firefox)

They really should add the option to set custom one, especially on Android all of the currently available ones look so bad.

I'm just glad they've kept all twelve themes. "Classic Firefox" is older than "Artist Voices," and the latter was discontinued a while ago on the desktop.

This is about time I get to utter my favorite taco commercial quote:

Why not have both?

Mozilla seems to believe browsers are the destination, rather than a means of getting there.

does it work with animated images/videos?

It doesn't let you set custom one at the moment, only those that you can see in the picture.

I'd rather they fix the"Firefox is already running" bug

Now all I want is APIs for extensions to create modular New Tab Page sections... Or would that be a major security hazard

I have been waiting for this. Do you reckon this will put and end to Tabliss?

Can’t you do that with CSS already?

If you are a web developer, sure

Or reasonably good at copy/pasting stuff and searching the web.

Grandma doesn’t want to learn what all the gibberish in “Inspect Element” does. Browsers need to be built for regular people too

The other user was talking about the user CSS thing, and you can basically just copy/paste stuff from the Internet into that file. Grandma won't do that, but your average Firefox user who likes to customize stuff can probably figure it out. No inspect element needed, just open a specific text file and paste stuff from the Internet.

More bloat ? Perhaps there's other more important stuff to do ?