Waterfox, Firefox and overriding new tabs to display local file
Saturday, June 6th, 2020 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darkoshiI've been using Waterfox Classic, which allows old pre-Quantum Firefox add-ons to work.
Today I finally tried out Waterfox Current, which doesn't support those old add-ons and is based more on the current version of Firefox.
With Waterfox Current, my prior methods of overriding the new tab page to display a local HTML file did not work. I tried out several other ideas*, which did not work either.
I finally found a way to make it work, using the js/cfg file method described on these pages:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1210576
https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/comments/elqmwf/new_tab_homepage_local_file_broken_userchromecss/
According to the 2nd page, that method worked for Firefox v72.
I had noticed a while back that the new tab override wasn't working for my current-version Firefox browser either, but I don't use that browser much anyway.
Now today when I try using the same 2 files that work for me in Waterfox Current, with Firefox 77.0.1, they still don't work there! Fie! Fie! Fie on you, Firefox!
*You can use an add-on to have new tabs open your home page, but it doesn't work when the home page is a local file.
You can use an add-on to open a specific website (but not a local file**) in new tabs.
**Unless the add-on copies the local file to the add-on's storage space, in which case you need to reload it in the add-on every time you update the file. Having a (static) local file which the add-on loads to its storage space redirect to another (dynamic) local file does not work.
You can use an add-on to redirect from one URL to another. But redirecting the new tabs from a specific website to a local file does not work; that gives a Security Error.
Today I finally tried out Waterfox Current, which doesn't support those old add-ons and is based more on the current version of Firefox.
With Waterfox Current, my prior methods of overriding the new tab page to display a local HTML file did not work. I tried out several other ideas*, which did not work either.
I finally found a way to make it work, using the js/cfg file method described on these pages:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1210576
https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/comments/elqmwf/new_tab_homepage_local_file_broken_userchromecss/
According to the 2nd page, that method worked for Firefox v72.
I had noticed a while back that the new tab override wasn't working for my current-version Firefox browser either, but I don't use that browser much anyway.
Now today when I try using the same 2 files that work for me in Waterfox Current, with Firefox 77.0.1, they still don't work there! Fie! Fie! Fie on you, Firefox!
*You can use an add-on to have new tabs open your home page, but it doesn't work when the home page is a local file.
You can use an add-on to open a specific website (but not a local file**) in new tabs.
**Unless the add-on copies the local file to the add-on's storage space, in which case you need to reload it in the add-on every time you update the file. Having a (static) local file which the add-on loads to its storage space redirect to another (dynamic) local file does not work.
You can use an add-on to redirect from one URL to another. But redirecting the new tabs from a specific website to a local file does not work; that gives a Security Error.