You will have to zoom out the about:newtab page to see more tiles in Firefox 33. There are changes coming to the about:newtab page and the thumbnails are of a fixed size and no longer resize. Instead the number of rows and columns is adjusted.

Some reading (please do not comment in bug reports): Bug 1026561 - The New Tab Page should be smarter about showing more tiles when on large screens Bug 1005596 - Aurora31.0a2: Starting a new tab does not honor custom rows and columns

Thank you very much. Does this mean that I simply have to wait for a hotfix? Or does this mean that I will always have to zoom out manually each time I open a new tab?

Neither of those Bug reports says anything about there being a "hotfix" in the works.

Each new tab has the default zoom level when it opens, there is no built-in method to change the default zoom level for only the new tab. An there is no way to change the size of the tiles so that each new tab has smaller tiles which would allow for more columns / rows without adjusting the zoom level for every new tab being opened.

My advice is to set your own choice of a webpage for "new Tab" or use an add-on like New Tab Tools. It allows for setting the the number of rows and columns. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/new-tab-tools/

It's sad. I don't understand why Firefox developers would remove this useful option...

Anyway, thank you very much!

I found the solution without using any add-ons. There it is: 1. Open the "about:config" 2. Find the "browser.newtab.preload" * 3. Reset it to "false"

    * it should be on "true" by default, if it's "false", then this fix will not work.

It works great! Thank you very much, VlVlK.

I'm not sure how "browser.newtab.preload" is related to the issue . . . it didn't do anything for me.

However, I found an actual fix. You can actually modify the CSS via the userContent.css in your profile. It is explained really well here.

The main focus in the article is removing the search bar from the new tab page but near the end it shows you how to change the size of the thumbnail links.

One of the best fixes I found for the horrible changes Mozilla has forced on us (well, that and Classic Theme Restorer)

There are also margins on the about:newtab page that you may want to remove as well.

userContent.css:

@-moz-document url(about:newtab) {
 #newtab-margin-top,
 #newtab-margin-bottom,
 #newtab-search-container {display:none!important}
}

fysiks said

I'm not sure how "browser.newtab.preload" is related to the issue . . . it didn't do anything for me. However, I found an actual fix. You can actually modify the CSS via the userContent.css in your profile. It is explained really well here. The main focus in the article is removing the search bar from the new tab page but near the end it shows you how to change the size of the thumbnail links. One of the best fixes I found for the horrible changes Mozilla has forced on us (well, that and Classic Theme Restorer)

Mozilla has a history of making change for the sake of change. There was nothing wrong with the old "new tab" window that was fixed with this new style. There was also nothing wrong with the old search box. In fact, I rather liked the fact that the icon representing the currently selected search engine was always visible in the search box.

i had made the upgrade from 31 to 35 for performance and security reasons, but I was turned off enough by these arbitrary style changes -- and found no appreciable improvement in performance -- to decide to upgrade to an earlier version (32) that doesn't have these annoyances. I am back to my old 3x3 tile grid on my new tab page and my old search menu.