Firefox 9 May Get a New Tab Page, with Visited Sites, Bookmarks and So on

Now that Mozilla has switched to a rapid release cycle, the Firefox teams have more time to work on the small features and polish, this while getting them ready and out the door much faster than before.

With Firefox 4 laying the groundwork for all of the current Firefox versions, 6 through 9, there is finally time for some long awaited features, like a speed dial new tab page.

The idea is to populate the new tab page with useful stuff rather than the blank page users see today.

"Whenever Firefox users open a new tab, their goal is to use it to navigate somewhere. Firefox currently displays a blank page when Firefox users open a new page. This is guaranteed to not help them perform their next task," Mozilla wrote on its wiki.

"We'd like to implement a page which displays on new tabs and helps users complete their next task. This will likely include offering options that are most likely to include the user's next task so that valuable time and steps are saved," it explained.

It's still in the early design stage, so it's not yet decided what the new tab page in Firefox will look like and what it will contain. Still, Mozilla aims to have it all ready for Firefox 9, which is now in active development in the mozilla-central channel.

Content in the new tab page is hardly something new. One of the most complete offerings, in terms of number of features, is the new tab page in Google Chrome, though that is getting a redesign, unfortunately, for the worst.

Mozilla has some good ideas for the new tab page in Firefox. For one, it should only show up when a user opens a new tab without having a very clear idea of to do next.

For example, if a keyboard shortcut is used to open it, the plan is to de-emphasize the new tab page, for example by making it black and white.

The latest design mockup is rather old, it's from May and it's for the Home page redesign not the new tab page. The homepage idea is still worked on and is slightly different than a new tab page in that it could contain more features, such as weather, data feeds and so on.