What's happening when you click inside of the url bar?

Firefox 75-76 ONLY

The latest beta debuts the "Megabar" for testing. This is probably not the final implementation, but I haven't been reading the details of the full plan.

If you can't find a way to display the "Show History" button, and you can't live without it, you can revert the change as follows:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste URLB and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.urlbar.update1 preference to switch the value from true to false

This does not change in currently open windows, but you'll notice the change in new windows (Ctrl+n) and of course in future sessions.

To disable the drop-down from opening automatically when the cursor enters the address bar:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.
(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste URLB and pause while the list is filtered
(3) Double-click the browser.urlbar.openViewOnFocus preference to switch the value from true to false

After that, to show the classic history list in the drop-down, you can either:

• press the space bar (type a space)
• press the down arrow key
• type ^ to initiate a history search

See also:

• Bug 1608766 - openViewOnFocus breaks most common pattern for quickly navigating toolbars with the keyboard

Hello, sorry for not responding earlier, had no access to the computer.

@TyDraniu >What's happening when you click inside of the url bar?

Well, nothing in particular. It just expands slightly, no history or suggestions is being displayed at this point.

@jscher2000 Switching browser.urlbar.update1 (as well as every other key under "update1") to false had no effect on the issue iself (it only reverted the bar appearance to the pre-update but no dropdown arrow). However toggling openViewOnFocus worked indeed and the arrow is back. I'm not sure what happens further with that issue (and the bug that @cor-el posted a link to), but at least I'm grateful to have the arrow back. Thanks.

AWKjrh32r1 this last post is the one that fixed it for me thanks for coming back and responding about it.

Now with the latest update the drop down has gone. How do I get it back? I will have to type in url's that I cannot remember without going to history. Why do you have to make things difficult for users.? Some things do not need changing.

Now with the latest update the drop down has gone. How do I get it back? I will have to type in url's that I cannot remember without going to history.

Hi toniwalker10, which drop-down are you looking for?

(A) Matches as you type from history, bookmarks, and open tabs

If Firefox is not showing any matches as you type, make sure you have those turned on as described in the "How can I control what results the address bar shows me?" section of the following article: Address bar autocomplete suggestions in Firefox.

Usually, if I type a couple characters, the address I'm looking for shows up and I can either arrow down to it and press Enter or if it's further down, click it with the mouse.

Sometimes dynamically generated search engine suggestions crowd out history. There are a number of ways to adjust that, including turning off search engine suggestions completely on the Options/Preferences page, Search panel.

(B) "Show History" list previously accessed with the wide "v"-like button

Firefox is moving away from having a separate button for this. You can type a space into the address bar to show the classic list or, when it is is empty, you can press the down arrow key to show it. If you have Top Sites enabled on the Firefox Home / new tab page, the list usually will be the first eight items in the Top Sites section. If you disabled Top Sites, the list usually will be the classic recent/frequent list.

If you want to disable Top Sites, that setting is on the Options/Preferences page. More info in this article: Customize your New Tab page to hide or display content.

Was either of those what you were looking for?

I am looking for the same thing as the original poster and then changing it in the URLB section. Now it does not change back to the arrow on the address bar.

Really don't know why things have to be constantly changed and made more difficult for users.

While the arrow also eventually disappeared for me, it's worth noting that the current (current for me - in version 77.0b2) behavior is exactly as if the arrow was clicked, i.e. when I click the url bar, the dropdown with mostly visited sites appears, which is really what I've been looking for. When I was creating the issue, this behavior was different, i.e. clicking the bar did nothing and only reverting the arrow would show the dropdown. Now even if the arrow is missing, the dropdown works fine for me.

Hi toniwalker10, the preference mentioned earlier in this thread is for Firefox 75-76. If you are using Beta, Developer Edition, or Nightly, the "update1" preference is no longer available.

If you keep browser.urlbar.openViewOnFocus set to true, when you click in an empty address bar, the default list will open automatically.

If you keep browser.urlbar.openViewOnFocus set to false, you need to press the down arrow key in an empty address bar to open the list. Or you can type a space. Or you can type ^ which triggers a history search.

Either way, if you want to change the default list from Top Sites to Show History, please see "(B)" in my previous reply.

I wrote an extension for a button similar to the old one, in case anyone wants to test it:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/show-history-top-sites-button/

(The reason I didn't put the button inside the address bar with the "Page Actions" icons is that section is not displayed when the bar is empty and your cursor is inside it, for example, on a new tab.)

You can use Customize to place the button next to the address bar:

See: Customize Firefox controls, buttons and toolbars

(Edit: Updated first screenshot)

"(B) "Show History" list previously accessed with the wide "v"-like button"

This is exactly the first thing I noticed when the update appeared on my system. If Firefox is "moving away" from this kind of thing, they need to reverse course, in my opinion. toniwalker10 is right, what is the motivation for reducing usability? As far as I'm concerned, Firefox's UX has been degrading since FF3.

I have 4 Firefox profiles.

When I updated to FF 75 the down arrow in the address bar disappeared. On 2 profiles I changed something in about:config and got the arrow back. All was good again.

Now I updated to FF 77. On the 2 previously modified profiles the arrow is gone along with the drop down list. If I go into about:config, “browser.urlbar.openViewOnFocus” and “browser.urlbar.update1” are both set to False.

On the 2 unmodified profiles the arrow is still missing, but clicking the address bar box does display a drop down list. In about:config, “browser.urlbar.openViewOnFocus” is set to True, but there is no “browser.urlbar.update1”.

I find it strange that the profiles that were previously modified to display the drop down no longer do. And the unmodified ones now do show the drop down.

I can go into the 2 previously modified profiles & change “browser.urlbar.openViewOnFocus” to True which gives me a drop down list but no arrow, which is OK. But the list is too short & does not display all 10 items like it used to. How can I change that number?

Thanks

Hi Mike109, the list that displays with browser.urlbar.openViewOnFocus = true are your first 8 Top Sites from the new tab page. There is no way to increase the number from 8 at the moment. You can manually tweak the list to have your most important sites. This article describes the steps to pin, unpin, etc.: Customize your Firefox New Tab page.

Meanwhile, if you click in the address bar and type a space (press the spacebar), Firefox will show the classic frequently visited URLs list.

Edit

Earlier in the thread I noted that if you turn off the Top Sites section of the new tab page, then the automatic list switches to the frequent URLs list. This is still true in Firefox 77 so that is another option.

Thanks for the tips.

Other than 2 less entries, the 8 Top Sites are the same as the 10 "classic frequently visited URLs list". Strange that it cuts it off the top 2 instead of the bottom 2.

I tried turning off the Top Sites section of the new tab page & that works great for automatically showing the 10 frequently visited URLs in the drop down list. Not sure if I’d miss the Top Sites section, I’m just used to looking at it. I’ll try it for a while & see.

The Top Sites & "classic frequently visited URLs list" are similar but not exact. But why aren’t they exact? How do they become a Top Site if not frequently visited?

I expanded the Top Sites to display 2 rows or 16 sites & there is no way some of those listed are more popular than other websites I frequently visit. What makes them a Top Site?

Thanks again for all the information.

Hi Mike109, setting aside any pinned tiles or tiles you've added, the Top Sites should be based on "frecency", a combination of frequency and recency. Based on my limited experience with my own Firefox, the classic list is weighted a little differently so the order among the top 5-6 is different, and also one site is missing from the "frecent" list. (You can view the frecent list in the address bar by typing a ^ character.)

Put me down for hating this change to the way the address bar functions now. Like someone above posted, why on earth are they taking away convenient functions that people are used to and love? Reminds me of Dr. McCoy in one of the Star Trek movies commenting on how the new Enterprise sick bay will be hard to get used to. He says "I know engineers, they just love to change things." Was there some performance or functional reason for taking away the little arrow in the address bar for most visited sites??? So now what used to be a simple single click is now a minimum of a click and a keystroke. And that's better? It's a different sequence and takes an extra action, so it's double the effort to get the same behavior. If you use this function a lot, which I do, those extra keystrokes add up very quickly and it's just very annoying because it used to function perfectly before. So this is an improvement how??? Was it change just for the sake of change? That was one of the features that brought me back to firefox from chrome. Chrome didn't have (and still doesn't have) anything like it. Had to use an extension to get that functionality. So now I have to get an extension for firefox to make it do something that it used to do perfectly well before it was summarily removed???!!! Seriously, WTF?

All of the recently workarounds from the past month no longer work for me in FireFox 77.01 and now I'm stuck with a rather new looking but dud URLbar.

Having this functionality removed is a serious PITA for my everyday browser workflow. Firefox devs absolutely must return the option to at least toggle this behaviour on or off.

My browser experience is completely broke without it. Removing it was completely uncalled for.

Hi Karlstens, the enlargement needs to be fixed using userChrome.css, which is a topic of many other threads.

By default, Firefox 77 drops down a list automatically when the cursor enters the address bar. To get that back, change browser.urlbar.openViewOnFocus back to true in about:config.

Then, you control the list using the Top Sites setting on the Options/Preferences page (see Customize your New Tab page to hide or display content):

• Top Sites enabled: the automatic list is the first 8 top sites from the new tab page, which you can customize to your liking by pinning/unpinning/adding/removing sites (see Customize your Firefox New Tab page)

• Top Sites disabled: the automatic list is the classic "Show History" frequently visited URLs list