Hi, the Add-on New Tab Tools will do that. (It's fine in v36, but can't be certain about v37 though).

Thanks, I tinkered with that a bit. That does what I asked for, but the appearance of the tiles was a bit more distracting than the search field was, so I disabled it. But this is a solution.

You can hide the search bar and the margins at the top and bottom with code in the userContent.css file to get more space for tiles.

You can add code to the userContent.css file.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/userContent.css

@-moz-document url(about:newtab) {
 #newtab-margin-top,
 #newtab-margin-bottom,
 #newtab-search-container { display:none !important; }
}

The customization files userContent.css (websites) and userChrome.css (user interface) are located in the chrome folder in the Firefox profile folder.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Editing_configuration

You can use this button to go to the currently used Firefox profile folder:

• Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder (Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder)
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox

• Create the chrome folder (lowercase) in the <xxxxxxxx>.default profile folder if this folder doesn't exist
• Use a plain text editor like Notepad to create a (new) userContent.css file in the chrome folder (file name is case sensitive)
• Paste the code in the userContent.css file in the editor window
• Make sure that you select "All files" and not "Text files" when you save the file via "Save file as" in the text editor as userContent.css.
  Otherwise Windows may add a hidden .txt file extension and you end up with a not working userContent.css.txt file

OK I've been using Ff enough over the years, I suppose its time I learned a css hack or two. I've only applied them to individual websites, which of course changed, rendering my hacks obsolete, so I just left CSS alone.

But I see here that this can be very useful. OK I'll take the nudge and plunge into css. Thanks.

OK I set up my userChrome file, restarted FF twice, but I'm still seeing the search field.

I took a screenshot so you can see if I did anything wrong: http://paulrittman.com/userchrome.png

Sorry, that code should be in the userContent.css file and not in userChrome.css. I will edit my above post to correct this.

The userContent.css shouldn't have the @namespace line that is required for userChrome.css.

Thanks. That got rid of the search field.

Now, however, the tiles are bunched up at teh top. How do I put a margin between the top row of tiles and the URL bar?

You can only use the code to hide the #newtab-search-container and leave out the code to hide the margins.

cor-el said

You can only use the code to hide the #newtab-search-container and leave out the code to hide the margins.

That's fine. I deleted those other two lines and the tiles are more or less centered---most importantly, without that search field.

Thanks for your help. Next time I see a solution with CSS I won't have to scroll past it.

You're welcome.