[ChrisSD]

It's great that they're continuing to add back customisation to the new tab page but why am I still restricted to two rows of "top sites"? I'm on a desktop here, I'm not going to run out of pixels. Even on Android I liked having more space for quick links to websites I visit semi-regularly. In fact it was more useful there because there isn't a good way to bring order to the history panel.

Is it just to make room for "highlights"? I switched that off because it's utterly useless for me. I don't find it helpful to be shown a random selection of things I've clicked on. Besides, I am capable of scrolling.

Yes I know, there's an addon for that (probably). But it just feels like such an arbitrary restriction.

Why are only twelve "top sites" allowed?

[ChrisSD]

To reply to myself I've found that about:config has `browser.newtabpage.rows` which I can increase. When I do that and restart the browser it resets to 3 but `browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.topSitesCount` is increased and more sites are shown. Changing `browser.newtabpage.columns` doesn't appear to have an effect.

My question still stands but at least there's a partial workaround, even if it's potentially unstable.

EDIT This setting doesn't appear to be available on Android.

[aembleton]

I've changed the `browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.topSitesCount` to 36 which fills my screen with 6x6 boxes filled with my top sites. Except, for the last box which is always empty!

It seems that there is a hard limit in Firefox of 35 top sites.

[ChrisSD]

Did you try restarting your browser? I've just tried setting rows to 12, which sets topSitesCount to 72. This worked for me after restarting the browser.

[ams6110]

And why can't I have my home page as my new tab page?

I don't want any of that "top sites" BS on a new tab, I want the local HTML file that I created as my home page. Why not allow it for new tabs?

[frio]

Given the existence of things like momentum (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/momentumdash/), I'd suggest maybe looking into packaging your HTML page into a web extension :).

[anotherevan]

New Tab Override should do the trick for you. I agree that it should be a built in though.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/new-tab-overr...

[dorgo]

I'm cursing for about a year about this. I spent days searching for workarounds and stopped short of hacking into firefox. Maybe I should just install firefox 50 and disable updates.

[ams6110]

Only thing I've found is that hitting ALT-Home keys in the new tab will load the home page. But it's one of those tiny repeated annoyances that I'd love to avoid.

[davvolun]

I can't really comment fairly here as I've gotten used to Chrome for the last 2+ years, but is there really not an extension in Firefox for this, even if it's not natively supported? Seems surprising to me.

[ams6110]

Yes there are, but for some reason using a local file is a problem. Something about the ability of WebExtension to access a local file. Probably sensible, but in this case annoying.