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How can I delete a pinned site that's breaking my "new tab" page when the address has changed?

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by cor-el

Susan_F
Susan_F
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I had a site pinned at the first tile of the second row on my New Tab page, and now only the top row of tiles shows up. I think it's because they changed the first part of the address of the page I was linking to and the old one doesn't work - I get a "Server not found" error, not just a 404 - so I think that's what's breaking the page. If I could see that tile I'd delete it, but the tile itself doesn't appear. Is there a way to clear all pinned sites and reinitialize the New Tab page? (preferably not by clearing all my cookies, because I use History and auto-logins a lot, thanks!)

Edited to add: philipp answered my original question (I tried to reply, but apparently replies aren't threaded), but that didn't solve the problem. I also tried some of cor-el's suggestions. Having deduced that my original hypothesis was wrong, I was going to post a new question with a more accurate lede, but I've found this: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1070178. Control-minus works - that is, I get the 2nd row of tiles back that I had before updating from 38.0.5 (I think) to 39.0. Does anyone know a way to get that zoom setting to stick on the new tab page without affecting any other pages?

I had a site pinned at the first tile of the second row on my New Tab page, and now only the top row of tiles shows up. I think it's because they changed the first part of the address of the page I was linking to and the old one doesn't work - I get a "Server not found" error, not just a 404 - so I think that's what's breaking the page. If I could see that tile I'd delete it, but the tile itself doesn't appear. Is there a way to clear all pinned sites and reinitialize the New Tab page? (preferably not by clearing all my cookies, because I use History and auto-logins a lot, thanks!) Edited to add: philipp answered my original question (I tried to reply, but apparently replies aren't threaded), but that didn't solve the problem. I also tried some of cor-el's suggestions. Having deduced that my original hypothesis was wrong, I was going to post a new question with a more accurate lede, but I've found this: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1070178. Control-minus works - that is, I get the 2nd row of tiles back that I had before updating from 38.0.5 (I think) to 39.0. Does anyone know a way to get that zoom setting to stick on the new tab page without affecting any other pages?

Modified by Susan_F

All Replies (3)

philipp
philipp
  • Moderator
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hi susan, you could reset the new tab like this: enter about:config into the firefox address bar (confirm the info message in case it shows up) & search for the preferences named browser.newtabpage.pinned and browser.newtabpage.blocked - right-click and reset those entries to their default value.

Susan_F
Susan_F Question owner
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Thanks! Now I know how to do what I was trying to do ... but it doesn't seem to have worked. Perhaps my hypothesis was wrong (something else is hiding the second row of tiles, and the broken link is just a coincidence) or perhaps I need to wait for that page to expire from the frequently-visited pages that the algorithm's looking at, though I've deleted it from my History.

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Did you try to drag an history item to one of those tiles?

You can change the order of the boxes on the about:newtab page and drag an item to a different tile to pin it to that position or you can remove a website by clicking the close X to block that URL. You can drag a bookmark or history item from the sidebar and drop it in a tile on the about:newtab page to pin this item and have your own favorites sites present.

Changes made manually on the about:newtab page are stored in prefs that you can find on the about:config page.

  • browser.newtabpage.pinned stores websites that you have pinned to a tile.
  • browser.newtabpage.blocked stores websites that you have removed by clicking the X button in a tile.

Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem.

  • Switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance
  • Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window