You can revert to the old AwesomeBar by:

1. Type about:config in the urlbar
2. Search for browser.urlbar.update1 and set it to false
3. Search for browser.urlbar.openViewOnFocus and set it to false
4. Restart Firefox

Thanks.

How do you stop it from auto-popping a list just by clicking in it? That dropdown automatically showing is new behavior too.

Hi dhicks34, you may recall that before, when you hovered the address bar, there was a little "Show History" button to list your frequently visited sites. Now that function is called by clicking anywhere in the bar.

To revert that:

(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

Goodness. Thank you guys. I just like my browsers lean and simple. I appreciate your time.

jscher2000 said

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

I really wonder why they didn't add it under update1 or at least a common sub-preference... I'll edit my original post. Thanks jscher2000.

When you make "cute" changes you should allow users to opt out of the change BEFORE the update is downloaded.

Note that this is a major design change for the location/address bar and mentioned prefs will only be available during a limited time and will be remove in future Firefox versions.

cor-el said

Note that this is a major design change for the location/address bar and mentioned prefs will only be available during a limited time and will be remove in future Firefox versions.

Then I will be permanently switching browsers when that happens. I've about had it with changes to the UI that make no sense and are anti-user. It's the only browser with a user profile that routinely gets corrupted.

It used to be minimalist, light-weight, fast, and have great accessibility.

I'm done. If those preferences go away from the browser, so do I.

dhicks34 said

It's the only browser with a user profile that routinely gets corrupted.

What gets corrupted in your profile?

jscher2000 said

dhicks34 said

It's the only browser with a user profile that routinely gets corrupted.

What gets corrupted in your profile?

Beats me. Eventually one of two things happens: It forgets history and open tabs or it will stop rendering CSS correctly. The only solution is to create a clean profile. This isn't just me. I have to support these problems at my job and it gets a lot of head scratches because people don't realize that that is a possibility.

Hmm, those sound somewhat unrelated.

Forgetting history

I assume you don't allow CCleaner, Advanced SystemCare, etc., in your environment, so we can rule out "cleaners" as the culprit.

If the places.sqlite file becomes corrupted, Firefox may replace it with a new one that contains just bookmarks. Is that what your users are seeing? Normally things will be fine from there.

Forgetting open tabs

Session restore is pretty reliable if people understand how it works. For example, using Exit preserves the state of open windows, while closing windows individually limits the number that can be re-opened (and only the last one will be re-opened automatically).

If there is a hard system crash like a power outage, or if the user runs Forget/Clear Recent History, the files can be destroyed.

Stop Rendering CSS Correctly

If Firefox is clearly not loading certain style sheets, this can be caused by certificate problems, especially if a proxy/filter is running. The Network Monitor tool in Firefox's dev tools is useful to see failed loads from secondary hosts like CDNs. https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Tools/Network_Monitor

If the problem is more selective, it may be related to Enhanced Tracking Protection or add-ons, but I don't think there is a clear signal of what to look for that you could rely on in every case.

jscher2000 said

Hmm, those sound somewhat unrelated. Forgetting history Is that what your users are seeing?

No, it's just gone. Bookmarks are fine. The history is just gone. No, those tools aren't used.

Forgetting open tabs Session restore is pretty reliable i

I've successfully used that but I still recommend people just bookmark things they want to look at later in case there are other things they do like accidentally closing too many tabs or windows. (Psh... users).

Stop Rendering CSS Correctly If Firefox is clearly not loading certain style sheets,

No, it's just straight-up rendering CSS wrong. It loads the styles and then just goes full stupid.

dhicks34 said

No, it's just gone. Bookmarks are fine. The history is just gone.

Well, next time, look for a file named places.sqlite-corrupt in the profile folder to see whether Firefox itself decided not to continue using the old database. If that's not there, something might have removed the file so Firefox just created a new one from the latest bookmark backup (there's no history backup to use).

Unless your user desperately needs it, this is probably too much effort to recover history: https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Tech/Places/places.sqlite_Database_Troubleshooting

Not to dismiss the help you've given (which I will use, thank you), the point is that none of this should be necessary. We went through all of that and we shouldn't need to.

dhicks34 said

Not to dismiss the help you've given (which I will use, thank you), the point is that none of this should be necessary. We went through all of that and we shouldn't need to.

Of course. I think it's extremely rare -- we hardly get any threads where someone lost all their history -- so I don't know why it's happening regularly in your environment.

It's not regularly to any one person per se but regularly enough that I keep bookmarks, tabs, etc. backed up constantly and recommend the same to others. To be sure, for me, it's in my home environment. To others I support, it's a corporate environment. I keep bookmarks on how to recover the last session, open tabs, bookmarks, etc. Firefox is the only browser this happens to anyone I know of. I mean, if there's a way to give a log or data when that happens, I'd be glad to submit it.

I will chime in with the users that find this new "improvement" anything BUT an improvement. Not only does it overlap things I want to see, the dropdown list is VERY hard to dismiss, not at all intuitive. What a terrible change, you should ban whoever dreamed this up, and double-ban whoever ok'ed it.

As a 50+ year software developer, I see this all the time, young designers thinking up new ways to make things cuter and cuter, not realizing that the majority of users are very happy with things JUST THE WAY THEY ARE!

And if you remove the ability to shut off this crappy change, I probably will, sadly and after many many years of use, quit using Firefox and go to Chrome or Opera, I'll have to see which one I dislike less.

Come on guys, wake up! First you make a major change with no obvious end-user benefit that permanently killed all the useful extensions I've found and used over the years, now you start screwing up the UI. Just quit fiddling with that and make it rock solid, clean and fast, how's that for a goal? Enough with the endless new "features" that nobody wants or needs. Did you ever survey users in advance and ASK them if they wanted this? I bet not.

-- end of rant --

Hi Tom,
I've passed on your feedback. Preventing the address bar from overlapping other content is part of a list of improvements that you should receive in an update in the next month or two.

I've passed on your feedback, so the product team is aware that this this is important to you.

In the meantime, Danny Colin's post was marked as the solution by the person who asked the original question (dhicks34). Your issue may have similar symptoms, but it is likely a different cause/solution. If you have any followup questions, could you please use https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new where volunteers can get more details about your setup.

Because this thread is solved and more people might start using it for their own questions, I'm going to lock it.