Starting in Firefox 33, some users are finding that the zoom level of the page is making fewer thumbnails visibile (e.g., 6 instead of 9). However, so far I haven't heard of zero being visible...

Could you test whether it's a zoom issue by shrinking the contents of the page? Hold down the Ctrl key and tap the - key a few times. Does that bring some thumbnails into view?

If your Firefox does not remember the changed zoom level on the "new tab" page, or if you prefer to resize the thumbnails without shrinking the search box, I think you will need an add-on, or to apply a custom style rule to your Firefox. This thread has more information about these workarounds: New tab has multiple thumbnails.

When shrinking the page, NO thumbnails come up. NO "buttons" show up to pin a page to the tab. I downloaded an add-on to customize my new tab and it did not work either. NOTHING is working. All I get is a search engine box.

To configure the new tab using the New Tab Tools extension, go to the Add-ons page. Either:

• Ctrl+Shift+a (Mac: Command+Shift+a)
• "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons

In the left column, click Extensions. Then find New Tab Tools and click the Options button. After selecting your preferred setting, press Ctrl+t (Mac: Command+t) to test.

If it doesn't match, you might have another extension influencing the layout of that page. What search engine is showing up? That might be a clue.

Here's some additional information about setting the new tab page:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste newtab and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.newtab.url preference and enter your preferred page:

• Page thumbnails (default) => about:newtab
• Blank tab => about:blank
• Built-in Firefox home page => about:home
• Any other page => full URL to the page

Press Ctrl+t to open a new tab and verify that it worked. Fixed?

Some gotchas:

If Firefox won't let you edit this setting: you may have something called SearchProtect on your system.

If Firefox lets you save your change but ignores it: one of your extensions may be overriding it. You can review, disable, and/or remove extensions on the add-ons page:

"3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons > in the left column click Extensions

If the change works during your session, but at the next startup is back to Conduit: you might have a user.js file in your personal Firefox settings folder (your Firefox profile folder). This article describes how to track down and remove the file: How to fix preferences that won't save.

Any luck?

I used about:config and Add-ons Manager and deleted the search protect that was on my computer. I still get the search engine box when I open a new tab. The search engine is Lavasoft. I uninstalled it and deleted it, but it still doesn't work. What next?

A-ha!!! I reset Firefox and now I have boxes!! woohoooo!!! thank you for all the information! I'm going to save it for future reference. You really know your stuff! Thank you!

Yes, sometimes a Reset is faster than examining each extension to see whether it is the culprit. During a Reset, an Old Firefox Data folder is created on the desktop. I suggest keeping that around for a few weeks just in case you notice anything important missing from Firefox during that time.