i was informed that the search engine icons show up once you start typing something in the search field.

Thanks bobrooney. My issue is that the last feature that sort of set firefox apart from Chrome and the like has been improved in a way that is unusable to me.

Which is, typically, I would use the shortcut alt+arrow to narrow down my search through engines, then copy/paste my text or type into the field. For whatever reason, that's been exchanged for a clunky grid of search engines and a long list of hints below (when previously, you'd only get one.) 

Another smaller, but no less important oddity, is that we used to be able to reference which engine we used last by viewing an icon to the left of the field. Now, apparently that is now just a search icon. Why? lol I switched to chrome because it's now just as useful as firefox and performs better. I will miss you firefox! :( {troll-tears}

To revert the search bar design change, you can:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

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

(3) Double-click the browser.search.showOneOffButtons preference to switch it from true to false

This doesn't affect the current window, but each new window you open (Ctrl+n) will have the old Search bar.

jscher2000 ftw! Thank you so much!

So every time I open the browser I have to go through this? The fix isn't a fix and isn't working for me. I prefer having an option to make it permanent. This was not a change we needed or wanted. Disappointed in Mozilla.

The new search bar is so unusable i was half my way to another browser untill I found the browser.search.showOneOffButtons solution.

The worst part is now you need to use your mouse a second time after you typed in your search to click on the search engine you want to use. Or you could change your default search engine every time you think you will use it for at least 3 times. It's just bad.

My understanding is that you do not have to make this fix every time you open a browser. Once you set the config value, you should be back to normal again. Completely understand the frustration here though. Suuuch a strange 'improvement.'

Might be a good practice for Firefox to adopt changes to important features slowly. Show a short 'how-to' once the update is done patching, and allow for users to say "yay, or nay" to the feature, reverting back to the old design for the "nay" users and taking a poll whether or not folks are adopting.. Seems like a rational experiment for at least important features.

Anyway, glad the config changed worked, back to work for me ! :)

Ah, so it is a permanent fix. When I opened the browser later it came up more like the usable "old" way. Glad the fix works! I especially like the "yay, nay" suggestion. A quick focus group kind of thing. Is it user-friendly, etc.

I did a search on this support site and thanks to jscher2000 I was finally able to revert to the previous search bar, which allows arranging of the engines in the preferred order. I was not able to do that in the new v.35.0 arrangement.

I created a new account solely to comment on this. The workaround is fantastic, and restores the old functionality of the search bar. My issue with the search bar is not about the workflow, but in relation to how other textboxes work. Previously, worked like a normal textbox. Starting in version 34, now when the dropdown is visible, I can't drag+select text, I can't triple-click in the search bar to select all text, there are other examples, but it's downright unusable when you want to just replace a section of the text.