A couple suggestions. You can search via the address bar....Or you can click tab on your keyboard to very quickly go to the search bar.

well it does not work well as in chrome: first it is not fast, becuase it is designed for address. second, i want to have google results and not a specific page.

I'm having the same problem. It would be nice to have the option to either have the address bar or current page active when opening a new tab.

After using Chrome for a long time then moving back to Firefox at work, I got annoyed enough at Firefox's default new tab behavior to write an add-on to fix this.

So here's the New Tab Searchbar addon. It's a tiny addon which makes new tabs focus on the search bar instead of the address bar.

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

Can u update the addon for FF13? Not working anymore...

Or how can I edit about:config to do it by myself?

THX!

Custom New Tab 1.6.3 add-on partially solves this for firefox 13 - if google is your home page then new tabs open with just the google page, and the focus in the search box.

BUT the first home page still puts the focus in the address bar. Totally maddening. Can't blame the Custom New Tab add-on, that is dealing properly with new tabs - its' the first tab that is the problem.

Firefox are arrogant time-wasters.