I was doing some web surfing in Firefox (Windows) when I had a bit of finger trouble. In response, Firefox popped up a message that said something like "you have chosen to open 27 pages at once, do you really want to do this, continue or quit." I responded "quit", Firefox didn't open any pages and I carried on with what I was doing. However, the next time I opened a new tab it opened, not with a blank tab but one containing large thumbnail images of pages I had recently (or not so recently) visited. I assumed that my bit of finger trouble had accidentally done something to Firefox. But how to undo it?
I racked my brains for a solution until I remembered that I had got
Magicure on my system. Magicure is a bit like System Restore but it works for all types of file not just system files. It has got me out of many a scrape in the years since I installed it. So I used Magicure to roll the system back to its state yersterday morning and Firefox appeared to be back to normal. I started the browser, opened a new tab and it came up blank as I wanted.
Everything seemed fine until late this morning, when I opened a new tab in Firefox and it was full of recently visited pages again. This was not how it was yesterday morning. Magicure has never yet failed to restore my computer to its exact state on the date I roll back to. So what the heck is up with Firefox or my computer and how do I get it back to normal?
12 comments:
I think this is a feature, not a bug, in the latest Firefox release (13).
Steven, W3SFG
Ok Julian, Open a blank page in Firefox, in the top right corner there are 9 very small boxes click on these to toggle this feature.
It has appeared in the latest relese13.0
Cheers
Chris G0BHX
Julian,
Everything is fine here. You might want to try downloading the latest version and reinstalling. Maybe something got corrupted during the latest upgrade?
Larry W2LJ
Sorry Julian, Should have said "open new Tab"
Chris G0BHX
Mine started doing that, too. But, I don't find it at all annoying so haven't attempted to change it back. I've never wanted a blank tab to open up anyway. I mean what is the use of that?
What has been really annoying is that randomly when I do searches I get an AVG search page. This took quite a bit of fiddling to get rid of it, as each "fix" only worked temporarily.
This keeps recurring because firefox is updating itself, and as noted its a new feature. Fret not.
--
Phil, KJ6PON
This is totally normal as it is a new feature in the latest Firefox 13 upgrade.
Patrick, ON4CDJ
Thanks for all the comments, especially Chris G0BHX who explained how to get things back to "normal". I do remember seeing a page that said Firefox had been updated but I thought it was just the usual fixing of bugs. I can't see what the purpose of the new feature is but it would have been nice if they could have warned us.
As others have said, it's just the way that 13.0 does it. If you don't like it, ignore it. It just puts some potentially useful stuff into the blank page you'd otherwise get if you opened a new tab.
I find it kind of useful, sometimes. More useful than a totally blank page, anyway.
--
Gordonjcp MM0YEQ
just open "Tools" and clear the recent history and that should get rid of all the recent pages that you opened displayed on a new opened TAB. I am now running Beta 14 version of Firefox.
the display is a good reminder how many web sites you have already visited..
If you want to permanently turn this dubious feature off, open a new tab and into the address bar, type "about:config". You may get a warning to be careful. Say you'll be careful. Then find the key "browser.newtab.url". Change its value to about:blank and you'll have the old behavior back. -- Tad KC5UWS
Thanks a million, Tad. That's fixed it.
Post a Comment