Description of the issue: clicking new-tab-page search box instantly crashes said brave instance.
How can this issue be reproduced?
- Download Brave
- go to “brave://new-tab-page/”
- click search box (middle of the screen)
Expected result: to be able to search or type in said box
Brave Version( check About Brave): v1.78.94 (latest)
Additional Information: I can’t even type a single letter, the search box is fully bugged out, this worked fine 1 day ago. I tried reinstalling brave and replicating on a fully fresh instance of brave with no history, cookies or extensions, same issue.
This is a longstanding issue with Brave, which I believe they don’t intend to fix.
The design and functionality of brave://new-tab-page is a holdover from the Chromium source and includes links and resources maintained by Google, not Brave. Brave does not want you to use this as your new tab, they want you to use the Brave-branded page at brave://newtab (assuming you haven’t customized the URL for your new tab page in settings).
The issue regarding the crash harkens back to when the search box in question was known as the “fakebox” due to the foolish decision in an earlier Chromium implementation to redirect keyboard input to the Omnibox (address bar / URL bar).
People were truly annoyed by that, such that the Chromium developers eventually changed it to function as a real text input field for searching or pasting URLs, and it was henceforth known as the “realbox”.
It was at that time, if I recall, that it would crash Brave when the user clicked in the search box, apparently due to Brave not properly handling Chromium’s new realbox mechanics.
It would be great if they would fix it, even if it was just restored to the state of a fakebox, as I myself vastly preferred that page to what Brave gives us now. I’m not holding my breath.
