a quick clarification -- when I'm navigating in page 0 or page 1 and I click HOME - the page I'm on DOES go back to my home page, but another tab opens (so now I have 3 home page tabs) and if I go to any page and click HOME again I get yet another tab

Why do you want to set the home page as two pages that open Google? That way you will always get a second page if you click the Home button.

Note that you can middle-click the Home button to open the home page in a new tab.

You can add the URL to the Firefox desktop shortcut to open only that page and possibly use the -new-tab switch to force a new tab.

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Command_Line_Options

Hmmm - asking someone why they want to do something that YOU don't want to do? Interesting concept of 'contribution', don't you think?

Let me put it another way: "Why do you chime in when you're not helping?" Here: this guy said it years ago, better than I can: https://www.redhat.com/archives/redhat-list/2006-August/msg00263.html

When I open a new tab in firefox - a BLANK page is, out of all the choices available on the planet - the LEAST USEFUL option I can possibly imagine. What I want, and used to have, was a browser that had TWO tabs specified in the Home Pages in the Options tab.

When I opened firefox, I got two tabs with the home pages I choose. What part of the HOME button in tab one would imply I want a third tab open? If I hit HOME a second time, I get yet ANOTHER new tab open.

It seems, even on the face, if my "home page" option reads http://www.homepage1.com | http://www.homepage2.com that I want TAB 1 to be homepage1 and TAB 2 to be homepage2, doesn't it?

If I OPEN a new tab (tab #3) it opens BLANK ... just as I would expect it to do.

But if I HOME while in Tab1 or Tab2 I get a third tab open to Home Page1

There is NOTHING intuitive about that. NOTHING.

That's the way Firefox works.

What you want or expect to happen doesn't count for anything at all, when the program isn't made to function in that manner.

Earlier versions worked just fine. But that said, you're right. I should expect a new tab to open every time I click the home button.

When you have more than website set as your Homepage.

We are trying to figure out what you want to achieve and maybe provide an alternative because it doesn't work with Firefox the way you use currently.

If you set multiple home pages then all those pages will be opened if you click the home button.
That has always been the case in Firefox.
In some cases the current tab may be protected and those pages open all in new tab, so you can end up with two extra tabs if you have two pages set as multiple home pages.

Well then let's back up a bit. Let's I have a default, vanilla setup with one home page listed in the options. (let's say Google)

When I open FF it opens one tab and loads Google. If I navigate to another page, lets say Craigslist, and I hit the HOME button, FF takes me back to Google in my one tab.

In other words, there is a precedent set for the action of the HOME button: It loads my Home page in the active tab.

Now lets say that tab 0 is on Google and I click on the + (new tab) button. A SECOND tab opens up (lets call it Tab 1) It opens to a blank page ... then let's say I put "www.yahoo.com" in the address bar. Now Tab 0 is on Google and Tab 1 is on Yahoo.

If I click HOME while in Tab 1 - I get Google loaded. Why? because Google is the one & only HOME page!

At No Point is the action of the HOME button to open a new tab. Never. It's not what the Home button does, not what the home button does on ANY browser, nor is it what the Home button is expected to do.

The HOME button loads your HOME PAGE into the Active Tab. Period. That's what it does, that's what I expect, that's what it does on IE as well

Now with THAT as background ... if I set up my home page option with TWO home pages (google | yahoo) then when I open FF I get two tabs with their respective pages loaded.

If I click the + button, I get a third tab - but the tab is blank ... because FF knows what to do with the first two tabs, has NO INFORMATION on the third tab .... so it leaves it blank.

Still no problem.

The problem NOW is that when I click the HOME button in ANY tab .... a NEW TAB is opened!

Suddenly ... HOME is no longer "take me home" Now ... HOME is "take me home AND open a new tab"

You see my confusion? Regardless of what I do, why I do it, what my sinister motivations are or what a waste of space I may be on this planet ...

Specifiying more than one page in the 'home page options' causes the nature and behavior of the HOME button to change in unexpected ways!

The HOME button should take the active tab to the user's home page and should NOT open new tabs.

That all said, I understand a type of problem. In typical config "google.com" is home. always. Regardless of which tab I'm in ... home is .. home. When I have google|yahoo - then what IS home?

If I'm in tab 0, it's google - if I'm in tab 1 it's yahoo ... so what does it do when I click HOME while in Tab 2 ?????

THAT would be a fair question for a programmer to ask.

With multiple home pages, FF could load the home page for the appropriate tab ..... FF could load tabs 2 & above blank .....

but at NO point should FF infer that HOME means open more tabs! The + sign is for that

'Home' is always all the pages that you have set as possibly multiple home pages.
Firefox doesn't treat multiple home pages using only the first page that is set, but will always open the entire set and thus you get an extra tab with the second home page.
Firefox doesn't have a way to select which page or pages to open if multiple pages are set as the home page.
So if you want to open only one page occasionally then you will have to use a bookmark in such a case.
Note that you can middle-click a bookmarks folder to open all the bookmarks in that folder in tabs.

home should never open a new tab. ever. home should direct the ACTIVE tab to the home page.

That said, I'm bored with this entire conversation - and now I will do what true Americans now do in cases like this - I will lower my expectations.

The home page can now load my most recent Word document it wants ... because FireFox does what Firefox does.

I have had the same original problem here as dbdataplus12 for a while now concerning having multiple tabs set as home page.

For my use, I have 4 tabs set up as home pages - each tab being set to a different web address, as I always use all 4 websites whenever I start any browsing sessions.

I had given up hope of trying to find an answer to resolve it or at least find out why it happens.

If it's just because it's the way FF works then so be it, and I'm stuck with FF doing something that, as far as I'm concerned, it shouldn't really be doing that way - but I'll have to put up with it anyway ;)

But having come across these replies to dbdataplus12 query it's prompted me to have to post here.

I can see why dbdataplus12 basically gave up on trying to get a clear answer to his query. "That said, I'm bored with this entire conversation - and now I will do what true Americans now do in cases like this - I will lower my expectations. "

So maybe I can explain better what I see as my problem with multiple home pages, what is happening within FF and why I think that it shouldn't be doing things that way, and what I think FF should be doing instead.

If it turns out that I'm just expecting too much from FF or the people who program FF, or maybe my expectations are too high to have something so obvious be able to be done - that just doesn't happen in FF, or maybe just plain wrong of me to expect certain things from a tool such as FF - then so be it ;)

As dbdataplus12 said " ... if I set up my home page option with TWO home pages (google | yahoo) then when I open FF I get two tabs with their respective pages loaded."

When I startup FF I get my 4 tabs opened to their respective web addresses. So far so good :)

I then use those 4 tabs during my session, and again so far so good ;)

The problem then happens when I wish to go to my home pages again. On clicking the Home button, a new set of 4 tabs open up, each going to their respective web address as they are supposed to.

Why aren't the original, existing tabs used to go to the home pages?

I would have thought that it was obvious that when I click on the Home page button that the 4 tabs that are open go to the home pages.

If I had closed one or more tabs then I would expect FF to open new tabs as required, and use those tabs to go to the relevant home pages.

If I had opened new tabs myself during my session to visit other web addresses, I would expect that the first tabs be used to go to the Home pages - any other tabs that may be open would stay on their relevant pages.

That's what I would expect to happen.

Not for FF to just open up 4 new tabs.

As I say, to me, it's just plain obvious.

The first tabs onscreen should be used to open up any Home pages set up, so that whenever the Home page button is pressed those tabs are used.

And for FF to open up additional tabs, if tabs had been closed and are needed to enable all the home pages to be shown.

As I say, to me, it's just plain obvious.

So, if it's just that FF doesn't work that way - then so be it. I'll accept that as the answer and have to put up with new tabs opening every time I press Home ;)

But maybe someone, somewhere, could think about altering FF so that it uses existing tabs etc instead of just opening new ones. Maybe you could have a setting in the preferences to switch the option on or off to reuse tabs whenever the Home button is pressed.

Just a really, obvious idea ;)

Thanks for reading - and hopefully replying.

And hopefully taking the idea onboard ;)

I feel your pain, takenoprisoners.

This is a classic problem with free/community software. The drive is, of course, to build a product people will accept, but there is also a tremendous amount of ego involved. When something isn't covered clearly in a specification the programer will often indulge himself in how to accomplish things and then that solidifies into the "right (tm)" thing.

I could recite a litany of areas where a product/program operates a certain way "for your own safety" and the program CANNOT be made to operate for your own convenience - and at some point I'm almost driven to ask "what does it become MY computer?"

I once asked a Linux forum how to open a telnet (plain text) port on my system and I got back about two dozen "why do you want to do that?" "You shouldn't do that?" and "you are wrong to want to do that?" because, presumably, every one of the respondents knew my system better than I did, knew more than me about what I was trying to accomplish .. etc. In any case, they all classify as intrusive and useless responses.

In this case, my objection was that the HOME button has never - on any browser - ever in the past - meant "open another window." Or if it has, I apologize, but I've never heard of such a thing.

How to FIX this problem is not complex from a design standpoint, although it may be ugly from a programatic standpoint.

Open Windows are numbered 1-x from left to right. If you have three open and you close the leftmost one, then the window that was #2 becomes 1 & #3 becomes 2, etc.

The HOME button, when pressed, loads the HOME page in the active, focused window. If it's pressed in Window ONE, then home page ONE is loaded. In TWO, then TWO is loaded ... and so forth. There is no need at all to consider than Window 2 is now window 1, etc.

With regard to the first Window AFTER your home page list (say you have google | aol | yahoo) - Window 4 can be opened BLANK, It can be opened to #1 always or it could be round robin (window 4 opens Google, Windows 5 opens Aol, etc.)

Now if you step back, the entire situation is clearly a program structure error -- a poorly thought out routine by the programming team: The HOME PAGE routine is linking into the INIT routine.

In other words, when you open FF the init routine calls a function that opens all home pages. When you hit HOME, the program calls that entire INIT function again - not just the home page PORTION of that function.

The question is whether or not the programmer in question will every see that and say "oops!" and fix it ... or whether the egos involved will cause him or her to say "you CLEARLY don't understand how Firefox is intended to operate ...."

You can't expect Firefox to open two pages in one tab, so if you set multiple (i.e. more than one page as home pages) the all those pages open as many tabs as home pages are set. This is what you would expect, multiple home pages imply multiple tabs.

Note that you can set which page (only one page) to open if you click the New Tab button.

See this article about the New Tab page (about:newtab; pref: browser.newtab.url):

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/new-tab-page-show-hide-and-customize-top-sites

Are you serious? It would take about an hour to flow chart a process where hitting the HOME key while in an active window - loads the HOME page in that window and never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever opens a NEW window.

This was bad program structure and nothing more.

What is against with setting only one page as your home page if that is what you want to open if you click the Home button?

You can't achieve what you want if you set multiple home pages.

If you want to open multiple pages then you can use a bookmark or a bookmarks folder on the Bookmarks Toolbar and click the bookmark or middle-click the folder to open extra pages.

Cor-el - I don't want to prolong this.

when I set two home pages - OPEN loads both pages. when I am in either one of those two page, the 'home' key opens TWO MORE pages.

If I set ONE home page - Open loads that page. When I am in that page, the 'home' key DOES NOT open a new page.

DO YOU GET THAT?

No matter how you try to spin it - you are spinning irrational behavior. If HOME loaded my last 'word' document -- saying "What is against with setting only one page" is as useless AND stupid as anything else.

PLEASE do not respond. I get it. You're an apologist.

If you don't want to prolong this discussion, either "unsubscribe" from this thread so you won't get any more emails about an answer being posted here, or just stop posting here yourself.

Firefox work the way it works!

We get it - "your way" is the correct functionality; and the Mozilla people who decide what features are included in Firefox are wrong, along with the 400 + million users of Firefox who don't share your opinion.

talk about egos ...

OK - so I just checked my mail to see that there was a reply to my posting here in this topic.

Evidently both cor-el and the-edmeister seem to have personal issues with dbdataplus12 .

I will post my query separately to the forum and hope that I get a reply.

Thanks.

Nothing 'personal' as far I am concerned. dbdataplus12 is expecting Firefox to work the way he wishes it worked, not the way Firefox does work, and always has worked with regards to multiple homepages and hitting the Home button. IIRC, that "feature" has been like that since Firefox 0.8, back in Feb 2004.

Wow, Ed -- just 'wow'

In single page mode, Firefox loads a home page into that tab on open. The home button re-loads that home page in that tab

In two Home page mode, Firefox loads the respective home page into both tabs But now the home button no longer loads the home page in that tab or in respective tabs ... NOW it opens additional tabs every time the home button is pressed.

And your answer is "that's the way firefox works?"

So if a two home page scenario caused the Refresh button to load my last WORD document - your answer would be "that's the way Firefox works?" Seriously?

Or might you say that in your OPINION that would be an irrational thing for it to do - since the refresh button is not generally associated with loading Word documents?

The Home button is not generally expected to open new tabs Ed. There is no browser in which the Home button opens a NEW tabs, Ed. Even in Firefox, Ed, the Home button does not open a new tab, E

Except in multi-home page mode when it acts irrationally, Ed.

And according to you, Firefox has maintained this irrational behavior since 2004, so according to you, Ed, that's now the way Firefox is SUPPOSED to be, Ed? Pressing Home button may or may not reload your home page in the active tab but might instead open one or more new tabs?

Just ... "wow!"

And what I meant by 'prolonging this' was not closing the thread. Cor-El is like you: If a program behaves in a way that doesn't seem rational - just accept it. Got it. I want the HOME button to act the same way ALL the time, Cor-El feels that I'm being demanding. So Cor-el and I have exchanged that point of view and there is no reason to prolong the debate between the two of us.

Same here, Ed. You believe that Firefox works the way it works and anyone who mentions that the behavior is irrational is expecting that Firefox works the way he "wishes." Got it. You go so far as to imply that the irrational action of the Home button is what the world truly wants and NEEDS ... since 400 million people use the product.

just -- wow.

Cor-el is just like you, but you're not just like Cor-el. He didn't make it personal.

Ego, Ed? Your Pompous, Ed.