I want to restore the drop down list with back and forward buttons (lists the last ten or so pages visited)

Oh, never mind... sometimes you DO have to read the directions, duh...

But, for anyone else who doesn't read the directions (Hello, sisters and brothers):

Just click and hold the back button and the little menu drops right down.  ;-)

The arrow to open the tab history of the Back and Forward buttons has been removed in Firefox 4 and later.

Use one of these methods to open the tab history list:

• Right click on the Back or Forward button
• Hold down the left mouse button on the enabled Back or Forward button until the list opens

You can look at this extension:

• Backward Forward History Dropdown: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/backforedrop/

Sorry. Doesn't work. Guess I'll quit using Firefox until this is fixed.

That add-on only works if you are using graphic buttons. I use plain text option and the add-on does not have a text "v" arrow in that mode, it just displays a blank space. :-(