Home page/new tab page - are these settings redundant?

[Stilez]

The main options page has a setting for "home page" (under "general") and also a setting for "new tab page" (under "tabs").

The "home page" can be one or more specified URLs, a bookmark, or palemoon.org. A "new tab" can be blank, the start page, or the quickdial page.

To me this feels like redundancy, in which some options are available for one, some for the other, when actually they're really almost the same thing. Although it's a very long-standing way or organising this area of settings, inherited from Firefox, maybe it can be improved.

When PM starts up, if the user isn't reloading their previous session, then the browser in effect opens a new tab. Do people really need/want a setting that says "If opening a new tab at the start of browsing, open a different URL than if opening a new tab partway through a session"? Because that's effectively what it's doing. I don't think that users need or benefit from two settings, one for "new tab at start of session" and one for "new tab partway through session". Or if they do, they should be one above the other and on the same options tab, because they are closely related.

A side-effect is that the options aren't optimally helpful. For example, "blank page" is offered as a a new tab option during a session, but not as a new tab option for the start of a session. (You have to type "about:blank" manually to get it at session start). Merging would mean users don't have to select twice.

Instead, maybe the UI should ask first, what a new tab should contain (blank/start page/quickdial/URL/bookmark/search engine). Then immediately below, it can ask what to open at the start of the session, with a checkbox "Same as a new tab" and a dropdown next to it (dimmed if the checkbox isn't checked) containing the further options: quickdial/list of pages/bookmark/search engine/PM start page/PM website/previous session.

[Moonchild]

Do people really need/want a setting that says "If opening a new tab at the start of browsing, open a different URL than if opening a new tab partway through a session"?

They absolutely do.