User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/31.0 (Beta/Release) Build ID: 20140610163407 Steps to reproduce: Opened new tab in Firefox 31 Actual results: New Tab contains a redundant search bar that wastes 1/3 of the window which was previously occupied by links to sites. Expected results: There should be an option to remove or turn off the search bar. There was no search field in the new tab page. (preferred behavior) Now there is a search field in the new tab page. (not my preferred behavior) The correct solution is to provide an option in about:config to toggle the search bar from the new tab page when it is not useful or desired by the user. see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=962490

I'm guessing this will inevitably be marked resolved won't fix... Been almost half a month since this bug was filed and no updates and with the 31 getting shipped in less than 3 weeks.

So the main item of this bug is that there's a search field, or that there are less links to sites (due to the wasted space)? I think the latter, but title says something else. Personally I would either remove the search bar or move it to the top. Having at least 3x3 links is important for me. (BTW on 1280x1024 screen everything is OK, but on 1366x768 there are only 2 rows, which sucks.)

In https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=962490, where this change was decided, that second comment was: “Having effectively three search bars seems like over-cluttering the UI, although it does look nice in the screenshot”. – I agree with that except from that I don’t think it looks nice. How long will it take until somebody notices, that “the average user“ thinks this search bar will only search the history of visited sites and that we definitely need a fourth one. For example in the title bar? @aliaspam: I do exactly want, what the title of this bug says: A possibility to remove this unnecessary search bar and get more space (as I already did with the second one; searching via address bar is enough for me). The exact number of links to sites should be defined with browser.newtabpage.colums and browser.newtabpage.rows in about:config.

Oh, I found some workarounds, one of them doesn't require addons, so it can be automated in a bash script: http://www.ghacks.net/2014/06/18/remove-search-bar-firefoxs-new-tab-page/ And if for some reason Mozilla wants to keep the search bar, it can be something like this: https://wiki.mozilla.org/File:Centered_search_actually_default_32423.png

@aliaspam: This workaround works … almost. And I see, that the problem is more fundamental. The link tiles now seem to have a fixed minimum size. As long as the browser window isn’t big enough, my preferred settings of browser.newtabpage.colums and browser.newtabpage.rows in about:config are completely ignored. I now use the addon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/new-tab-tools/ to restore the previous behavior (next to “Old Default Image Style” an “Click To Play per-element” the third one, that restores an useful feature that was kicked out for being more user-friendly for the average user).

It's fixed, it can be closed.