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Adjust URL & Search Engine boxes on Navigation Bar to different widths and URL box the widest.

  • 4 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 5 views
  • Last reply by Carlisle

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For years my URL address on the Navigation Bar has stretched out far enough to allow most of the URL to show. Then, after a Reload Icon, the Search Engines (Bing, Dictionary, etc.) box would be about a third of the width that the URL box. After that, the rest of the bar is used for Home/Bookmarks/History/etc. Now, without knowing when it occurred, the URL Box is too narrow to see but a few letters of the URL that is entered and its drop down box is the same. I can find no way to widen it. All is working well, but I would like to have the displays appearing as before. I have kept up all the most recent version updates and have version 20 presently. I don't think this happened due to the update ------- at least not immediately. At the same time this occurred, my Bookmarks Toolbar vanished. I made sure the bar was checked, and manually put all the bookmarks I had back in. It is OK now. I thought way back that one could put the cursor at a point on the side of the Navigation Bar's boxes and get an arrow icon that would extend or narrow the boxes. I am not sure of this, but I know it doesn't work that way now. Any help would surely be appreciated! Thank you.

For years my URL address on the Navigation Bar has stretched out far enough to allow most of the URL to show. Then, after a Reload Icon, the Search Engines (Bing, Dictionary, etc.) box would be about a third of the width that the URL box. After that, the rest of the bar is used for Home/Bookmarks/History/etc. Now, without knowing when it occurred, the URL Box is too narrow to see but a few letters of the URL that is entered and its drop down box is the same. I can find no way to widen it. All is working well, but I would like to have the displays appearing as before. I have kept up all the most recent version updates and have version 20 presently. I don't think this happened due to the update ------- at least not immediately. At the same time this occurred, my Bookmarks Toolbar vanished. I made sure the bar was checked, and manually put all the bookmarks I had back in. It is OK now. I thought way back that one could put the cursor at a point on the side of the Navigation Bar's boxes and get an arrow icon that would extend or narrow the boxes. I am not sure of this, but I know it doesn't work that way now. Any help would surely be appreciated! Thank you.

Chosen solution

I didn't send picture since the restore to default and putting the old icons back worked this time. I had tried carefully before, but the double arrow was still missing then. Thank you for your help. CFB-

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I'm not aware of any way to resize the URL bar or the search bar within the navigation bar. If they don't seem to be expanding to fill the desired space, there might be a glitch in the relevant settings file (it sometimes becomes corrupted). You could try renaming the file to restore all toolbars to defaults and see whether you can re-customize to your liking. If it doesn't work, you could delete the new file and restore the old one.

(Although in theory this file is editable, I've never seen any clear and understandable documentation on how it works.)

Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using

Help > Troubleshooting Information > "Show Folder" button

Switch back to Firefox and Exit

Pause while Firefox finishes its cleanup, then rename localstore.rdf to something like localstore.old.

Restart Firefox. Your toolbars should have their default layout and you can use Customize to rearrange things as usual from a clean sheet.


Firefox's toolbars can be modified using style rules, but if you just have too much stuff on there, that probably won't help.

I personally have to be pretty ruthless with icons and move a lot of them to the Add-on bar; that sits down where the status bar used to be and can be toggled on and off using Ctrl+/ or the Toolbars menu.

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Please provide a screenshot of that issue.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-create-screenshot-my-problem

It is best to use a compressed image type like PNG or JPG to save the screenshot and make sure that you do not exceed a maximum file size of 1 MB.

Then use the Browse .... button below the Post a Reply text box to upload the screenshot.


The 'double-arrow' still appears on the Firefox 21.0 Beta version when the cursor is on hover between the URL bar and the Search bar, which allows those 'bars' the be dragged to change their size. But that doesn't work as well when the URL bar and the Search bar are moved to the Menu bar, as it sounds like you have done.

My advice is to Restore Default Set (in the Customize mode) and to re-do your toolbar customizations from scratch. And to hide the Menu bar, while doing your customizations to the Navigation bar instead.

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Chosen Solution

I didn't send picture since the restore to default and putting the old icons back worked this time. I had tried carefully before, but the double arrow was still missing then. Thank you for your help. CFB-

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I finally used the restore to default for the solution I first tried. I was careful before, but the double arrow used to extend the URL box was not present. This time it worked. Thank you for your suggestions at any rate. I appreciate it. CFB-