Here is how you can reset what the tab does. If this setting does not stick, one of your remaining add-ons might be overriding it.

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box that appears above the list, type or paste newtab and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.newtab.url preference and enter the desired value:

• Page thumbnails (default) => about:newtab
• Blank tab => about:blank
• Built-in Firefox home page => about:home
• Any other page => full URL to the page

Press Ctrl+t to open a new tab and verify that it worked. Fixed?

Oh wait, I haven't seen Firefox 31 (Aurora). Perhaps this is a future change???

browser.newtab.url is set to about:newtab and has the thumbnails and pages i always had, but that search box just appeared out of nowhere this morning and its quite annoying at least for me, since it shrunk the thumbnails and moved them towards the middle and i can't find a way to disable and make it go back to "normal"

As for if it is a new future feature, i don't know, before posting i did a bit of research reading release notes for firefox/aurora or other people with this same "problem" and found nothing

I haven't used 31 either. I might have to download Aurora and test this out.

Yep, this is definitely something new. I can see it on the latest Aurora.

So i guess there is no way to disable it at the moment right?

Looking quickly into about:config, I don't think so. But Aurora is the alpha stage of Firefox so features get removed/added from time to time.

On the other hand, I'm not very skilled at the prefs in about:config, so maybe jscher2000 has input to add?

Here's the XUL source code that is related to the newTab search panel.

<div id="newtab-search-container">
        <form id="newtab-search-form" name="searchForm">
          <div id="newtab-search-logo"/>
          <input type="text" name="q" value="" id="newtab-search-text"
                 maxlength="256" dir="auto"/>
          <input id="newtab-search-submit" type="submit"
                 value="&searchEndCap.label;"/>
        </form>
      </div>

This userContent.css code will hide it.

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

correction

Thank you, the ed-meister!

Your code did just the thing. However, I had to put it to userContent.css. In userChrome.css, it didn#t work for me.

While some users may appreciate the search on the page, others may see it as redundant especially if they display the search bar in the browser's interface.

There is no direct option to remove search from Firefox's new tab page, but as always, there are edits that you can make use of.

The following requires no third-party add-ons:

Type "about:support" (no quotes) in Firefox's address bar and hit enter. Click on the Show Folder button to open the profile folder. Switch to the Chrome subdirectory here. If it does not exist, create it. Open userContent.css. If it does not exist, create a new plain text document and rename it accordingly. Paste the following information into the file and save it afterwards (No >'s)

> @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml); > @-moz-document url("about:newtab") { > #newtab-search-container { > display: none !important; > } > }

Restart the Firefox web browser afterwards. When you open the new tab page in the browser now, the search form is no longer displayed on it. Note: IF this does not work, retype or copy from the following page: Remove Search Bar FireFox New Tab Page

Another option is to create a fix yourself using an add-on.

I used Stylish: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/

Follow these instructions to remove the bar:

1. Download Stylish (Restart required)
2. Open a new tab (Or type 'about:newtab' in your address bar)
3. Click on the Stylish icon (Located top right)
4. Hover your mouse over "Write new style..." Select "for this URL"
5. In the window that popped up delete all of the text and paste the following in the window, then name your work whatever you want and hit save

Copy this set of code (Provided previously here, and from third party sites)

@-moz-document url("about:newtab") {

 #newtab-search-container, #newtab-search-logo { display:none !important; }

}

This might be easier for some users, who don't know what Cascading Style Sheets are, or how to make them. It also saves front-end users with little experience from having to find the AppData folder.

I hope this helps to some extent, Dillon P.

CREDIT: the-edmeister provided me the tools needed, I simply found another way to use them.

Additional note: This will not resize the thumbnails on the new tab, so they are still smaller than they were, but it's still a lot better in my opinion.

I am gonna close this thread that was started when Firefox 31 was in the Aurora development stage.

This code from a posting that cor-el made is IMO superior to what I came up with back in May.

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

It eliminates the "margin-top" and the "search-container", thus moving the tabs grid upwards.

edit Here is the UserStyle - https://userstyles.org/styles/103765/fx-31-about-newtab-hide-the-search-bar

locking this thread