How To Enable Speed Dial “New Tab Page” For Mozilla Firefox Nightly Build

As you might already know, the Nightly Builds of Mozilla Firefox include support for the new speed dial tab page, which is very similar to the one that is used by Google Chrome. However, this feature was available for previous versions also, but for it to work you needed to download and install an extension and only then your Firefox browser would’ve been able to display the a speed dial page but now you can easily enable it by using ‘about:config’ hacks and trick your Firefox web browser into displaying it.

Mozilla Firefox Nightly Builds are the latest versions of the browser and Mozilla told users that with this somewhat new generation they will manage to get back on the market and continue the battle for supremacy with Internet Explorer 9 and Google Chrome, since these two are the main competitors. The new tab page will work only with the Nightly Builds and this new addition makes the Firefox browser looks very similar to Chrome and if you wish to apply the changes on your computer then you should follow the steps listed in this article.

The ‘new tab page’ of Firefox features a 3×3 grid and it consists of the most visited websites and if you want to activate it for your installed Mozilla Firefox then you should follow the steps listed below. Please note that the changes can be applied only for the latest ‘Firefox 13.0 Alpha 1′ Nightly Builds. Here’s how to do it:

Launch Mozilla Firefox and in the address bar enter ‘about:config” without the commas and then press the Enter key on your computer’s keyboard.
Now you should see a warning message. Click ‘I’ll be carefull, I promise!’ button to open the config menu.
In the search filter bar type ‘newtab’ and then press Enter to begin the search.
You should see a list containing a line named ‘browser.newtab.url’ and you should double click on it. Now change its value from ‘about:blank’ to ‘ about:newtab’.
Now double click on the line that says “browser.newtabpage.enabled’ and change its value from false to true.
Restart Mozilla Firefox and from now on it should feature the new tab page. Go ahead and customize the best way it suits you.

These were all the steps that you had to take to activate the Speed Dial page of your Firefox web browser. In case you don’t like how it works or if you consider it to be running slow, then you can easily disable it by repeat the steps on step 5, only that now you simply double click them and select to reset options, then close Firefox and then launch it for the changes to take effect.

Also, if you don’t have the latest Nightly Build for Mozilla Firefox and you wish to download and install it, then go here and select the newest version for installation. Please note that the latest releases are listed at the bottom of that page. I hope that this tutorial helped you and if you have other questions then you should post them in the comments box listed at the end of this post.