New tab page

[OxaWhitney]

In the tab options for what to display when opening a new tab I selected "A blank page," but the Quickdial page opens instead. I've switched back and forth among the three options several times. The "Pale Moon start page" and the "Quickdial page" always work properly, but "A blank page" always displays the Quickdial page. I've checked about:config and when I have "A blank page" selected, the browser.newtab.url value is "about:blank." Still the Quickdial page is displayed. Any idea what's going on here?

[OxaWhitney]

Aha! I figured out the problem. When I changed the value of browser.newtab.preload to false, a blank page appeared in a new tab as it should.

[Moonchild]

Simply exiting the browser and restarting it would likely have solved your issue as well. Preloading is recommended, but for about:blank it will (of course) not make a difference.

[OxaWhitney]

"Simply exiting the browser and restarting it" had no effect whatsoever. I tried that several times. Guess again.

[Moonchild]

"Simply exiting the browser and restarting it" had no effect whatsoever. I tried that several times. Guess again.

You are absolutely correct. I remember changing the default option for preloading now for that very reason quite a few versions ago, since the preload routine as devised by Mozilla is much too aggressive in its caching and would prevent the new tab choice from having an effect (barring manually emptying of all caches).

So, I should have said "if you're using Pale Moon default settings"

[OxaWhitney]

I really don't follow what you're saying, and it seems you're not understanding my concern, either. The problem here is that a standard option offered to the user doesn't work without having to tweak about:config. I was able to figure out the solution, but many others who select the "blank page" option for a new tab might not. They'll discover, as I did, that the "blank page" option takes them to the Quickdial page, and then what?

[Moonchild]

I really don't follow what you're saying, and it seems you're not understanding my concern, either. The problem here is that a standard option offered to the user doesn't work without having to tweak about:config. I was able to figure out the solution, but many others who select the "blank page" option for a new tab might not. They'll discover, as I did, that the "blank page" option takes them to the Quickdial page, and then what?

No, the default Pale moon setting (browser.newtab.preload=false) is to not preload the new tab page. It works out-of-the-box. If it was not set to "false" on your system means it was user-set previously, which obviously caused the problem you experienced. Others will not run into this problem unless they set the preload setting to "true" first, themselves.

[OxaWhitney]

NO, this was a brand-new installation of Pale Moon. It was NOT previously user-set. It did NOT work out-of-the-box. Stop blaming the victim.

[Night Wing]

I have Pale Moon installed in Windows and in linux. In both installations right out of the box, the "browser.newtab.preload" is set to False. I have never changed this setting.

[Moonchild]

NO, this was a brand-new installation of Pale Moon. It was NOT previously user-set. It did NOT work out-of-the-box. Stop blaming the victim.

No need to get upset.

Did you migrate your Firefox profile to Pale Moon? If so, then this preference was ported across. Even so, it must have been flagged as "user set" in Firefox in that case as well, meaning it was present in the preferences file on disk which is not common to occur (and only happens if this was set by the user manually or by an extension, before). If you didn't migrate your Firefox profile, then something else must have set this preference in Pale Moon, since it doesn't "just set itself". That's not how software works.

You can tell if a preference is user-set by the bold typeface and the Status "user set". The default for Pale Moon is most definitely not "true" and you can verify this by checking the state of the preference (see attach). Ergo, if you make a brand-new installation of Pale Moon, all preferences will be set to defaults, this setting included, and it will work out-of-the-box.

[LimboSlam]

Is there much of a difference on slower systems for this pref to be enabled? And why isn't it enabled by default anymore? Yes I read your post up top MC, but I still don't get why it was disabled by default for Pale Moon. I use the quickdial page quite frequently and I do run low grade PC's, so I'm wondering how much would I benefit form this. Hmmmm......?

[Moonchild]

The preload function is hard-coded to about:newtab. It will prevent the proper operation of using anything but about:newtab, so it simply doesn't work for having more choice.

[LimboSlam]

Thanks for explanation!