Firefox Tekoha Aty

I still have windows 8.1. I do all my bill paying online. I can no longer open my banks website for online business. I thought Firefox had renewed support through 2026? Wasnt Firefox a search engine? The listed search s - none of them open banks etc.

When I do a search in Firefix for "Quattro" it takes me to the weong page, namely https://more.mariosearch.com/search?uid=9bd4019de8c1003382e27c7bf792ee38&pid=s50002&install_date=20-09-2025&q=Quattro

I have my default search engine set to brave but every time I go to search for something it flicks back to google without my consent. There are no pop up boxes or steps asking me to approve this switch. It just does it on its own.

What is it with my default search engine constantly being changed behind my back? Is the Firefox update doing this? Is something else? Can't it be locked down so that only I can change it in the Settings menu? It really annoys me that I suddenly find I'm doing a google search when I, after research and deliberation, set the browser to search with DuckDuckGo.

Hi, I always prefer using DuckDuckGo.com because they are totally private but use it together with Mozilla as my browser, would I still be able to do that?

I have been fixing dozens of problems with 140 ESR's GUI. Earlier today I fixed almost all of the problems with the search panel:

Screenshot: https://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=15008668#p15008668

Except one: I do not know how to detect when the default search engine has changed. I need to know how to detect when the default search engine changes so I can update the favicon and placeholder text by recalling my gui_fixes_search_favicon() function in userChrome.js.

I'm an experienced web developer of 20+ years and would be grateful if someone could share their insight without the often "obligatory" cautionary tales 101 bit. Thank you in advance!

For the last couple of weeks my default search engine keeps changing. Even though I change it in the setting to the one prefer eventually it changes. Why is this issue happening and is there anyway to force my preferred search engine as a constant default?

Recently, when I copy and paste an error message to the search box in Firefox and the first word contains a ':', such as when searching for this error message - "MESA-LOADER: failed to open dri: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gbm/dri_gbm.so: cannot open shared object file" - I get the "Open the mesa-loader link with System Handler?" prompt (see screenshot).

I used to be able to copy and paste such an error before into the search box and it would just work but now the browser defaults to thinking you are entering a URL. This could be because when I start typing in the search box, it immediately relocates what I'm typing to the address bar. Maybe this is the behaviour I need to disable? But how and why is it the default?

Help!

Browser details

$ > snap info firefox name: firefox summary: Mozilla Firefox web browser publisher: Mozilla✓ store-url: https://snapcraft.io/firefox contact: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/file-bug-report-or-feature-request-mozilla license: unset description: |

 Firefox is a powerful, extensible web browser with support for modern web application
 technologies.

commands:

 - firefox
 - firefox.geckodriver

snap-id: 3wdHCAVyZEmYsCMFDE9qt92UV8rC8Wdk tracking: latest/stable/ubuntu-24.04 refresh-date: 19 days ago, at 13:56 AEDT channels:

 latest/stable:    144.0.2-1    2025-10-29 (7177) 261MB -
 latest/candidate: 145.0-1      2025-11-04 (7242) 262MB -
 latest/beta:      145.0b9-1    2025-10-31 (7213) 262MB -
 latest/edge:      146.0a1      2025-11-05 (7250) 298MB -
 esr/stable:       140.4.0esr-2 2025-10-14 (7023) 258MB -
 esr/candidate:    140.5.0esr-1 2025-11-05 (7236) 258MB -
 esr/beta:         ↑                                    
 esr/edge:         ↑                                    

installed: 144.0-2 (7084) 261MB -

OS Details

PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS" NAME="Ubuntu" VERSION_ID="24.04" VERSION="24.04.3 LTS (Noble Numbat)" VERSION_CODENAME=noble ID=ubuntu ID_LIKE=debian HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/" SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/" BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/" PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy" UBUNTU_CODENAME=noble LOGO=ubuntu-logo

<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">

   ...
   
   <Url type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" rel="self"
       template="https://example.com/opensearch.xml" />

</OpenSearchDescription>

Does Firefox still support automatically updating the opensearch XML description? MDN still mentions this feature: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/XML/Guides/OpenSearch#supporting_automatic_updates_for_opensearch_description

Also, in about:config, there used to be an "browser.search.update.interval" entry that specified the update interval. I can't find it anymore.

If this isn’t the right place to ask, could you point me in the right direction?