If you’re going to use the New Tab Page in Firefox browser or not, Mozilla has decided to to experiment more with it: as they’ve added sponsored tiles to New Tab last time, this time, they’ve added ‘suggested’ tiles.
When you open a new tab in latest Firefox Nightly, you’ll see a large popup saying that ‘New Tab got an update’.
Firefox New Tab Tour
First slide says: ” In order to provide this (new tab) service, Mozilla collects and uses certain analytics information relating to your use of tiles in accordance with our privacy notice.” And the slide tells how to turn this feature off.
Second Slide tells : ” New Tab will show the sites you visit most frequently, along with sites we think might be of interest to you. To get started, you’ll see some sites from Mozilla. ”
“You can remove or pin any site by using the controls available on rollover.”
Third slide: “Some of the sites you will see may be suggested by Mozilla and may be sponsored by a Mozilla partner. We’ll always indicate which sites are sponsored. Nightly will show sites that most closely match your interests on the web”
Removing suggested sites or tiles from the New Tab Page or making it blank
Click on New Tab Controls gear icon, in the menu, you can uncheck the ‘Include suggested sites’, then still top sites will till be shown or select ‘Show blank page’ (check the screenshot below).
That means Firefox New Tab Page could soon be available on stable with Sponsored as well as suggested sites, what do you say on this?
$ £ € ¥ (… is the root of all evil)
The about:newtab page has changed through time. If I remember correctly, it was just a blank page (this was long time ago, perhaps there was an option to make it like about:home). Currently, we have options: Enhanced, Classic, and Blank. I understand Classic shows tiles based on the user’s history and that is what I use. I hope that top sites (without suggested sites) will signify the same. My ad blocker (uBlock Origin) does nothing on that page.
Anyway, I definitively would prefer to receive sponsored ads than to be spied by my browser. I only enable the Crash Reporter. (I have to read Firefox’s Privacy Policy again!)
On a side note:
I noticed Firefox version 38 fixed a problem with the about:newtab page. The dialog panels from the New Tab Controls gear icon (refereed above) and from the search engine icon were being misplaced whenever the page had a magnification/zoom different than 100% in previous versions. (I normally have the page zoom at 80% to see all 12 tiles in my laptop’s screen.) Now the panels are placed correctly: Bravo!