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local Firefox New Tab page

Konstantinos Foutzopoulos

A long time ago, that is six years ago (pre-v41), it used to be possible on Firefox to choose a custom New Tab page editing the browser.newtab.url option. This was generally unrestricted and it could access remote and local files. It was eventually removed and now an extension is required (if not root or sudo access is available that is). The problem is that no extension can access local files, and the same applies even to home page. Some workarounds are possible. The local startpage, that is the page to be used as home and as new tab page, will be located at ~/srv/www/startpage/index.html with linked files inside the same folder.

It should be noted that in Chromium an extension, such as the excellent NewTab Redirect, is enough and can load a local startpage with JS support and without any delay.

Local web server

There’re a few extensions that allow changing the new tab page. The recommended ones are New Tab Homepage, New Tab Override, and Custom New Tab Page. The first is the simplest one and merely redirects the new tab to the homepage. The homepage can be edited at about:preferences#home, and setting homepage to custom urls. The second one similarly redirects to the page selected in the extension’s settings. This can either be the current home page, a custom URL or a local file (this will be covered in the next section). A problem with the two previous is that they don’t the leave the URL bar empty, which is something the last one does.

In order to load the startpage a local web server can be run. The @willurd’s gist contain numerous one-liners that can run a static web server in a directory. Based on them the following scripts can be used to run a web server to particular directory. The tools shown are the most commonly available in a Linux box: busybox, python, and ruby (well, the first not that much).

#!/bin/sh
busybox httpd -p 8000 -f "$1"

or

#!/bin/sh
python -m http.server 8000 --directory "$1"

or

#!/bin/sh
ruby -run -ehttpd "$1" -p8000

Then the first script may be run with the startpage as argument, and the later can be run with the directory this is located in. Though not the optimal solution, it is by far the simplest one and works without any issues.

For performance and lower resource usage there’re small static web servers which may perhaps be a better options. Examples of such servers are the ones mentioned in my comment in aforementioned gist.

Inline

The extension New Tab Override allows loading a single local HTML file into the extension’s storage. This can then be used as content for the new tab. The catch is that any linked files (such as images, stylesheets, and JS files) have to accessible via web which gets us to step… two. That is those extra files can be combined to single HTML file containing everything inlined. The tool inliner can be used for this, which can be installed with

npm install -g inliner

Then the following script can be used

#!/bin/sh
wwwd=~/srv/www/startpage/
inliner $wwwd/index.html > $wwwd/index.inliner.html

This combines everything in a single HTML file which can then be loaded on the extension. This is the closest to the old functionality. The two issues are (i) no JS support on the local page, and (ii) a slightly delay from opening the new tab to displaying the startpage.

AutoConfig

Firefox installations can be customized using a configuration file called AutoConfig. This file resides on the Firefox installation directory, and can be used to set and lock preferences. It is a method that, as per the Mozilla support, is used to automatically change user preferences or prevent the end user from modifying specific preferences. A common example is distros disabling autoupdate. Such a file can be used to set up a local new tab page. By placing the following files, taken from @cor-el’s answer in Mozilla support forums, the local startpage will be used.

The first is basically used to enable the AutoConfig file. In recent versions sandbox is required to be disabled in order to access local files.

/usr/lib/firefox/defaults/pref/autoconfig.js

pref("general.config.filename", "autoconfig.cfg");
pref("general.config.obscure_value", 0);
pref("general.config.sandbox_enabled", false);

The other is the actual configuration file. The configuration file is actually a superset of pref files such as the one above. It overrides the AboutNewTab.jsm service with a custom local file.

/usr/lib/firefox/autoconfig.cfg

// skip line -- required comment
var { classes:Cc, interfaces:Ci, utils:Cu } = Components;
try {
  Cu.import("resource:///modules/AboutNewTab.jsm");
  AboutNewTab.newTabURL = "file:///home/user/srv/www/startpage/index.html";
} catch (e) {
  Cu.reportError(e);
}

The previous has the address bar focused rather than the page itself. If someone wishes to have the new page focused the following may be appended to the previous file, taken from @Vallode’s answer in Mozilla support forums.

try {
  Cu.import("resource://gre/modules/Services.jsm");
  Cu.import("resource:///modules/BrowserWindowTracker.jsm");
  Services.obs.addObserver((event) => {
    window = BrowserWindowTracker.getTopWindow();
    window.gBrowser.selectedBrowser.focus();
  }, "browser-open-newtab-start");
} catch (e) {
  Cu.reportError(e);
}

TODO: Add NixOS instructions for last section