User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0 Build ID: 20171024165158 Steps to reproduce: Please refer to: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1185175#answer-1029121 I request a feature to be added to firefox, which would allow the user to set the "new tab page" to the current homepage. In other words, whenever a new tab is opened, the homepage will be displayed rather than the current about:newtab page. As of right now, the only way to customize the new tab page is by using extensions. Since firefox quantum extensions have received quite a few restrictions, one being that they cannot access local files. The homepage however can access local files. It is therefore quite ridiculous that I cannot set the new tab page to this homepage and am forced to use the about:newtab page instead (or of course use an extension along with a custom http url, since only local files don't work). I apologize if this is not the place to request this, but as you can see in the link to the question in the support forum, I've been redirected to here. Thank you. Actual results: See above description for feature request. Expected results: See above description for feature request.

I second this request. It is unexpected that Firefox Quantum removed the natural functionality of setting one's new tab page to a local file.

:tspurway hope it's OK if I ask: is it a matter of resources and priorities, or is it an undesirable feature (or some other reason for wontfix)?

The different flags we have for bugs might be confusing. The status says it won't be fixed for Firefox 59 (not that it will never be fixed). This is something we do want users to do but it involves more work and will be completed in a future version.

Thanks for explaining that, yes, I missed that wontfix was assigned to status-firefox59 only. That's good news.

This should be fixed as part of bug 1417155

Bug 1417155 landed, but it won't allow arbitrary urls for the new tab page due to past (external) abuses. New tabs can be set to Firefox Home, blank, and web extensions. The new window behavior allows any url though.

Thanks for the update. Can you please point me at an explanation of why new windows are treated differently than new tabs here? Do users expect to (be able to) see something different when opening a new window than when opening a new tab? I don't understand the reasoning yet.

I would very much enjoy an explanation of this too. I don't see how a custom URL is completely safe from abuse when it comes to setting your homepage, even though setting one for the new tab would make this abuse-able. There are currently 2 "extensions" that would supposedly solve this problem by overriding the new tab with your homepage, however, neither works with homepages that are set to local files. I guess the only way out of this is by setting up a local webserver and then using the extensions to grab it from there. However, this also means that I'll have to depend entirely on the continued functionality of the extensions, meaning that if an update breaks the extension, then so will this "overkill" workaround method. This is of course rather troublesome. Therefore I'd love more info/insight into why this can't be implemented. Please don't mistake this for arguing, I'd just like to know the "why" of things. Either way, thanks for the fact that you looked into it.