The new tab screen in Firefox has annoying messages popping up at the bottom and this may not be to everyone’s taste. But this can be changed very easily. Just create a user.js in your Firefox profile directory and put this in it. This will give you a completely blank new tab screen.
1 2 3 | // Display a blank new tab user_pref("browser.newtabpage.enabled", false); user_pref("browser.newtab.url", "about:blank"); |
So, this is very useful for removing this annoying feature if you do not want it. Or you can set the “browser.newtab.url” value to something else and not worry about it at all. Firefox is a good browser though, it blocks browser fingerprinting and this is a good thing. We just want to use the web in peace and not be bothered by annoying targeted advertisements. But the Internet is better than it was in the 1990s, with countless popups and annoying ads all over web pages, and the atrocious web browsers that we had to use like Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator 4. But Internet connections were slower back then, you needed a dial-up modem to access the Internet and not a constant VDSL connection, so it was limited. But there were a lot of good websites that are gone now. The loss of Geocities meant a lot of content was lost for good unless it was saved and moved to http://www.geocities.ws. That is a good thing if the content can be saved and then reuploaded, it can be enjoyed by a new generation. Although I am not sure if all of the X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer sites were saved. But I am sure they made a good effort to get everything.