New tabs are blank by default, but you should be able to type an address in the location bar above the blank area. If you display tabs on top, the location bar will be below the tab. If you switched to the old style, the location bar will be above the tab.

If you prefer to have your home page in the tab, or a list of frequently visited sites, there are add-ons for that.

Shows home page:

New Tab Homepage

Auto-generated list of sites (showing favicon, title, URL, no thumbnail image of the page):

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-dial/ (I have this one)

Thumbnails -- auto-generated list:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/new-tab-jumpstart/ (haven't tried it) (quite new)

Thumbnails -- user-selected list:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/speed-dial/ (haven't tried it) (over 9 million downloads)

Does that help?

sorry, this doesn't exactly address my question -- there is actually no location bar anywhere in the tab. there is just nothing at all on the page -- completely blank.

If you right-click after all the tabs (and the "+" (new tab) button) in a blank area of of the tab bar, can you restore the Navigation Toolbar?

if i right click over there, i can add a checkmark next to the "navigation toolbar" sign. this does not produce a navigation toolbar, but it does create a grey area where the navigation toolbar probably would be, with icons on the left relating to bookmarks and addblock or something (indicated by a stop-sign).

I think you might have an add-on problem. You can use Firefox's Safe Mode as a diagnostic tool to see whether disabling add-ons or settings restores the normal behavior.

First, make a backup of your computer for safekeeping. To back up Firefox, see Backing up your information.

Next, try starting Firefox in Firefox Safe Mode. Be careful not to "reset" anything permanently if you didn't back up.

Does that work?

thank you, jscher. this seems to have fixed the problem.