Something that I have always found a little weird is the Home page and the times at which it is displayed. The consideration of the Home page as a separate page seems to be the cause of confusion (at least to me).
Consider the following,
- Zero-tabbed state : The app allows tabbed browsing, but when there are no active tabs the "Show tabs" icon is not displayed. This seems unusual as any browser that allows tabbed browsing considers any page including it's home page as just another page in the tab and hence there's no way of having zero tabs. The app seems to be considering the "Home page" as a special page. This leads to the case that I call the "zero tabbed state".
- New tab : I still don't understand why the "Today's featured article" is shown whenever I create a new tab. It would be better to show the Home page instead (this considering it as just another page). The Home page does have a card for the "Today's Featured article" and as far as I could think moreover it's very unlikely a user would want to see the "Today's featured article" whenever he creates a new tab. I guess it woukd be enough to show it in the Home page where the user can swipe the card after seeing it. In case it needs more priority it could be shown as the first card until a user swipes it away.
- Closing the page : Tapping that "Close" icon on any page to bring the Home page seems a little misleading as it doesn't seem to be doing what a user would consider it to do (close the page). After tapping the "Close" icon when I click the "Show tabs" icon and tap the current tab, I get the article I just closed instead of the Home page. If the Home page is shown whenever a new page is created the "Close" button would be unnecessary. Also in every browser I have used I close a page by closing the tab or tapping the back button if it was the first page.
Conclusion
It would be nice to consider the Home page as just another page and show it whenever a new tab is created.