Python Selenium: getting rid of Firefox first run screen

Question

Currently my py.test + splinter + pytest-splinter tests load a Firefox welcome screen when browser instance is created:

How one can get rid of this and have about:blank as a starting page as this screen is wasting some time and bandwidth on each test run?

Answer 1

Set startup.homepage_welcome_url.additional property to '':

In [1]: from selenium import webdriver

In [2]: profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile()

In [3]: profile.set_preference('startup.homepage_welcome_url.additional', '')

In [4]: browser = webdriver.Firefox(profile)