Are you talking about the about:newtabs page? This page shows the sites you visit the most. You can, if you want, lock sites to this page.

Do you still have access to your old Firefox installation, or did you back up your data from that installation (your profile folder)? Without reference to that, it's going to be pretty hard to figure out how you had it before...

no, I don't. I didn't even know that was an option. Is it even an option to go back to an old version?

FredMcD said

Are you talking about the about:newtabs page? This page shows the sites you visit the most. You can, if you want, lock sites to this page.

but how? and how do I get it to stop saving every single page I look at? I don't need that. the old one didn't do that at all.

Hi JesyJoy, it is possible to transfer settings files from an old installation of Firefox to a new one. However, there's no way to merge history, so if you copied over the old files, you would be rolling back the history in your new Firefox to the time you last used your old one.

It sounds as though you no longer have access to that data, unfortunately, so it's hard for us to know whether you were using the built in new tab page and had pinned your favorite pages to it (that stops it from simply showing the frequently used pages) or whether you were using an add-on or website instead. Since it had a customized background, I suspect it was either managed by an add-on or is located online (managed through a website).

JesyJoy said

but how? and how do I get it to stop saving every single page I look at? I don't need that. the old one didn't do that at all.

Open the newtabs page. Place the mouse on one of the boxes. The box will now have a "pin" in one corner and an "X" in the other. "X" removes that block, but only until you go to that site again. "pin" locks that block at its current position. It will remain there until you unpin the block, or remove it.

jscher2000 said

It sounds as though you no longer have access to that data, unfortunately, so it's hard for us to know whether you were using the built in new tab page and had pinned your favorite pages to it (that stops it from simply showing the frequently used pages) or whether you were using an add-on or website instead. Since it had a customized background, I suspect it was either managed by an add-on or is located online (managed through a website).

it had to be the built in page because I never added anything to it or changed it. I didn't even know that was possible until now. When I clicked the new tab, it suggested some websites to me so I picked the ones I wanted and added my own and it was ALWAYS the exact same thing on the page. It did not ever add new links based on where I was online. I do NOT want that.

FredMcD said

Open the newtabs page. Place the mouse on one of the boxes. The box will now have a "pin" in one corner and an "X" in the other. "X" removes that block, but only until you go to that site again. "pin" locks that block at its current position. It will remain there until you unpin the block, or remove it.

But I don't want it to add new sites every time I visit them. That's stupid.

The built-in new tab page is designed to accumulate your most frequently used pages based on your history. That's what it always did. There is a gear icon on the right side to select between different modes of the page, but all of them have that same basic design of adapting to your usage.

What you do is this; Open the newtabs page. Before going on, decide what web sites / pages you want as 1, 2, 3 . . . . . .

Go to the first box. Do you want that site here? Remove it. If you do, pin it. Go to the second box . . . . . Go to the third box . . . . .

Go as far as you want. Also, you can use the zoom control to change how many boxes are on this page.

Once the "top" positions are set up, don't worry about the rest.

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 and drop them in a tile on the about:newtab page to pin them and have your own favorites sites showing.

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.