Firefox Tab Mastery
First part in the Back To Basics series. While some users prefer to have one tab open at all times when they use a web browser like Firefox, most have probably more than one tab open in the browser most of the time.
Tab management becomes important the moment multiple tabs are open in a browser, but especially so if the count exceeds the visible range in Firefox's tab bar.
Firefox Tab Mastery
This guide provides detailed information about basic and advanced tab handling options in Firefox, a truckload of keyboard shortcuts, configuration settings, and browser extensions that may improve tab management further.
1. The Essentials
This part covers the essentials when it comes to using tabs in Firefox, opening and closing especially.
Opening tabs
You open tabs with a click on the plus icon in the browser's tab bar, or with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-T.
Closing tabs
You close tabs with a click on the x-icon next to it, or with the shortcut Ctrl-W. Tabs can also be closed if you middle-click on them.
Re-open Closed Tabs
To undo the closing of a tab, right-click on Firefox's tab bar and select "undo close tab" from the context menu. Alternatively, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-T to re-open it and bring it back from the grave.
If the tab you want to re-open is not the last you closed, tap on the Alt-key instead to open the menu bar, and select History > Recently Closed Tabs which displays a list of tabs that were recently closed-
There you find an option to restore all tabs as well. If the closed tab is not listed, open the history instead and go through it until you find it listed there.
Opening links
If you click on a link on a web page, that page gets opened in the same tab unless you hold down the Ctrl-key while doing so, middle-click on the link, or right-click on it and select "open link in new tab" from the context menu. Doing so will open the link in a new background tab in the browser instead.
You can use Ctrl-Shift to open links you click on in a foreground tab instead.
If you hold down the Shift-key instead before you click on a link, that link is opened in a new browser window.
Pinning tabs
Pinned Tabs are permanent tabs in the browser that remain open even if you have selected not to restore the previous browsing session on start.
They take up less space than regular tabs, as they are only visualized using the site's favicon.
2. Not so common tab-related operations
This section of the guide covers tab operations that you may not use that often or at all.
Switching between tabs
While you can switch between tabs by clicking with the left mouse button on a tab, there are other options that Firefox provides in this regard.
Use Ctrl-Tab to cycle through all open tabs from left to right, or Ctrl-Shift-Tab from right to left. Windows users may use PageDown and PageUp instead of Tab.
You may also jump to a selection of tabs directly:
- Hit Ctrl-1 to activate the first tab in the browser.
- Hit Ctrl-2 to Ctrl-8 to activate the second to eights tab in the browser.
- Hit Ctrl-9 to jump to the last tab in Firefox.
Muting Tabs
Mozilla built in options to mute audio playing on sites in the browser. Firefox indicates audio with an icon that it adds to the tab the audio is coming from.
You can click on the icon to mute the audio directly, or right-click on the tab instead and select "mute audio" from the menu.
To unmute a tab, simply hover the mouse over the audio icon and click on it again.
Alternatively, use Ctrl-M to toggle between mute and unmute while the tab is active.
Tip: The Firefox add-on Mute Tab adds context menu options to mute all tabs open in the browser.
Moving Tabs
You can move tabs around using drag and drop. This goes for pinned and regular tabs, but you cannot mix the two as pinned tabs are always displayed first before the regular tabs are displayed.
If you move a tab away from the tab bar and let go, it opens in a new browser window that is created automatically.
You move tabs between windows by dragging and dropping them on the tab bar of the destination window.
You may also right-click on a tab to move it to a new window by selecting the option from the context menu.
Private Browsing and Tabs
Private browsing windows work for the most part just like any other window open in Firefox. The core differences are that you cannot drag and drop tabs between a private browsing window and a regular Firefox window, and that all tabs that are open during the private browsing session are closed regardless of whether they are pinned or not when the browser window is closed.
Bookmark all tabs
Current versions of Firefox lack the handy "bookmark all tabs" context menu option that previous versions of Firefox supported. You can still bookmark all or multiple tabs in Firefox in one operation, but the method is different now.
Hold down the Ctrl-key and click on any tab that you want to bookmark. Once done, right-click on any selected tab and select the "bookmark tabs" option that is displayed.
Reload Tabs
You can hit F5 on the keyboard to reload the active tab, or use Ctrl-R instead for that. Hit Ctrl-F5 on the other hand to force a cache refresh and load the content from the server and not the local cache if it is changed.
If you prefer to use the mouse, right-click on the tab you want to reload and select the option from the context menu. There you find the "reload all tabs" option as well.
3. The New Tab Page
Whenever you open a new tab in Firefox, the new tab page is displayed on that page. It displays a search form and thumbnails that depict popular sites you visited in the past, or sites that you have pinned to it, and other features such as highlights or snippets.
You may hover over any site there and click on the x-icon that appears in its right-corner to remove it from the page.
To pin a tab instead, click on the pin icon in the left-corner of the thumbnail instead.
New versions of Firefox support the adding of custom sites to the listing directly. Just hover over a blank entry and select the edit icon that is displayed.
Type a title and type or paste a URL to add a new top site entry to Firefox. If you don't have any blank spots anymore hover over an entry to remove it first.
The settings icon in the top right corner loads the New Start Page configuration menu. You can open it directly by loading about:preferences#home as well.
Firefox 66 offers the following options:
- Enable or disable web search.
- Enable or disable Top Sites, and set the number of site rows between 1 and 4.
- Enable or disable Highlights, and set the number of highlight rows between 1 and 4.
- Enable or disable Highlights individually: Visited pages, Bookmarks, Most recent downloads, Pages saved to Pocket.
- Enable or disable Snippets.
4. Tab-related preferences (user interface)
This section of the guide informs you about tab-related preferences that Firefox offers in the options. To load the options, type about:preferences and hit enter.
Startup (about:preferences#general)
If you want Firefox to load the previous browsing session, meaning all windows and tabs open when you exited the browser the last time, then you need to configure it that way first.
On the General preferences tab, select "Restore previous session" next to "Startup.
You may also enable "warn you when quitting the browser" there. Previous options, to load a blank page when Firefox starts are found under about:preferences#home now. If you want to add multiple pages there, separate each address with the "|" pipe character.
If all pages are open that you want reopened when Firefox opens, click on the "use current page" button to add them all at once to the home page field.
Tab preferences (about:preferences#general)
The very same page lists preferences for tabs, namely:
- Ctrl-Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order.
- Open links in tabs instead of new windows.
- Warn you when closing multiple tabs.
- When you open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately.
- Show tab previews in the Windows taskbar.
These don't require explanation for the most part.
Privacy
Tab-related, at least somewhat, are two options:
- about:preferences#search to allow or disable suggestions.
- about:preferences#privacy to clear the browsing history on exit (which may impact session restores).
Sync
If you enable Firefox Sync, an account is required for that, you may use it to synchronize open tabs between all devices you sign in to the same account.
5. Tab-related preferences (about:config)
Firefox's configuration file offers dozens of tab related preferences. The following list is a small selection of preferences that you may find useful.
To change the value of a preference, double-click it. If it is a Boolean, it will toggle between true or false values. Any other type will display a form that you can enter data in.
- browser.search.openintab - If set to true, searches from Firefox's search field will open in new tabs instead of the current tab.
- browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo - This preferences defines the number of closed tabs that Firefox will remember for its "undo tab" functionality. The default is 10.
- browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab - If set to true, will close the browser window when you close the last tab open in it. The window will remain open if set to false.
- browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent - If set to true, will open related tabs, those opened from within an active tab, next to the tab they were opened from.
browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground- If set to true, will load bookmarks in the background and not switch to them directly.
5. Tab Add-ons for Firefox
The last section lists popular tab-related add-ons for the browser. Mozilla's Add-ons site lists 1135 tab related add-ons currently.
- New Tab Override restores the option to set any url as the address that gets loaded when a new tab is opened in Firefox.
- Tile Tabs WE takes tabs from the parent window and tiles them to display them next to each other.
- Tree Style Tab moves the tabs from the horizontal tab bar to Firefox's sidebar. Apart from listing more tabs at the same time as a consequence, it visualizes the tab hierarchy as well.
Old extensions that are no longer available
Tab Mix Plusturns Firefox into a tabbed browsing powerhouse. Change many tab-related features and behaviors in the browser, for instance by displaying multiple tab bars in Firefox, adding new features like tab protection or locking, changing tab styles depending on status, or modifying the minimum and maximum width of tabs.Tab Groupsrestores the soon-to-be-removed Tab Groups feature of the Firefox web browser. It enables you to create groups of tabs that you can switch between easily to improve manageability.Tile Tabsprovides you with options to display multiple pages in a single tab.
All parts of the series up until now:
Now You: Did I miss a tip, tweak or add-on? How do you like your tabs?
Since I’ve rarely wanted to transfer more than one tab between browsers, I’m not inclined to install another extension just for that — especially one that (according to your description) closed all my tabs in the process. In the past I’ve just copied and pasted the URL, but (even for just one tab) that is a little tedious.
I just tried an interesting little experiment, with a useful result. (I did this on my Mac, but I’m guessing it would work on other platforms too.) I’m reading this article in Firefox, so I opened a new blank window in Chrome. At the top of both browser windows, at the far-left end of the URL bar, there’s a little icon of the letter “i” in a circle. (If you hover over it in Firefox, it says “Show site information”; in Chrome, hovering it says “View site information” — that’s the icon I’m talking about.)
I simply dragged the Firefox “i” icon from the top of this page, into the Chrome window — and this page loaded in Chrome! It worked! Then I tried something just a bit trickier, in the other direction — I first (from a bookmark) loaded into Chrome a page from my local web-development server (i.e. not online)… then dragged the “i” icon from the Chrome toolbar into this Firefox window — and it worked then too!
So, although I have no interest in the OneTab extension, I just learned something useful! I hope other people find this trick useful too. (Later I’ll try it in Safari — maybe it works in every browser?)
Interresting find Jonas, thanks for sharing!
Your comment doesn’t appear to be one of the real @Martin, because there is no black label rounding the entire title of the comment as before. :S
I also used onetab already and didn’t even know they had this feature. Thanks so much.
Exporting tabs to FF: “The address wasn’t understood. Firefox doesn’t know how to open this address, because one of the following protocols (chrome-extension) isn’t associated with any program or is not allowed in this context.”
Useless.
And the most important information was left out of the article or it don’t even exist in the first place: how to completely disable such functionality.
Your comment doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s an explicit user action to import data from other add-ons. If you don’t want it you just don’t do it.
This comment actually does make a lot of sense, and I am actually searching for this. Some people do NOT want websites to be (badly) translated, so they never use such a feature. The things is, every time I visit a non-english website this annoying menu pops up, and the button is another element in the URL bar cluster of useless unused features. I do not want to add all languages to a “do not translate” list, instead I want a “hide button” or “disable translations completely” setting.
This comment actually does make a lot of sense, and I am currently searching for this. Some people do NOT want websites to be (badly) translated, so they never use such a feature. The things is, every time I visit a non-english website this annoying menu pops up, and the button is another element in the URL bar cluster of useless unused features. I do not want to add all languages to a “do not translate” list, instead I want a “hide button” or “disable translations completely” setting.
my bad. somehow my, and I think DMoRiaM’s comment got mixed into the wrong article. Haha.
go to about:config and set browser.translations.automaticallyPopup to false.
Thanks Christoph for the info.
this worked, thanks!
Does this hack still work on FF 107 or whatever is most current?
Firefox 118 seems to be officially rolling this out by default: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/website-translation
Hoping Mozilla won’t remove the option altogether in the future as they already did for other, ahem, unwanted features… Why don’t they listen to their users instead?
@zed,
your reply seems to be Addlibs (according to your RSS reader),
Addlibs did not intend to comment on this article “OneTab browser extension”, but regarding Firefox’s new built-in fullpage translation “Firefox Translation”.
Firefox Fullpage Translation
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/website-translation
what the heck is going on with comments on this site lately?
first comment on THIS article was 9-2019.
Looks like the comments database is corrupted.
Besides old comments appearing in new articles, the same comment appears in multiple articles.
Also I answered a comment in one article, and the same answer appeared as an answer to a different comment by the same person.
@Martin Brinkmann,
Anyway, please deal with this anomaly ASAP.
Comments are a mess, irrelevant and chaotic.
If there is no prospect, Ghacks Technology News should be put on hiatus until the system is fixed.
It’s the same as before with endless monologues or people telling others why they are wrong.
Actually, Frankel, it’s you who’s wrong
This is all techo-BS. What people want is far simpler: a hotkey toggle: images on/images off. Is that really so complex? Seems so. It’s like autoplay videos on/off. In that case you can set it to off but it doesn’t stick. Typical digiocy.
This isn’t great but it might help people that have moved from chrome to firefox to some extent. I can’t tell you the amount of time I have seen people complain that a certain extension they use on google is not available and the only thing holding them back from moving over when they are actually wrong and the very same developer has a Firefox version also. I would always encourage manually looking as there are always hidden gems.
In regards to the website I have reached out to Martin personally and to his credit he replied very quickly. He has informed me that they are aware of the problems and are attempting to fix it.
Martin is no longer involved in the technical management of the site so I imagine if we want to ask someone then our comments would perhaps be better directed towards Softonic.
I don’t understand what is happening here with the comments. The counter shows zero comments and then inside there are some comments from older dates even since years. And mostly of them are non related by the way with the article. So sad what’s going on and nobody is still fixing it. :S
This site now appears to be mostly be created and run by AI. On the positive side (if there is one), I guess we can assume at some point the AI will be capable of recognizing and fixing corrupted files and the like.
“Import Chrome extensions” …. (by installing comparable Firefox extensions) … (for a small number of extensions).”
What a bunch of bogus PR spin. Someone who liked uBlock Origin on Chrome could already install it just fine on Firefox with a couple of mouse clicks. This just adds extra unnecessarily complicated steps to something that was already dead simple, all in order for Mozilla to claim fake one-to-one compatability that doesn’t actually exist.
It would be interesting if Firefox could install Chrome Addons directly from the Chrome Web Store. Although there would probably be some incompatibility, perhaps there’s a shim to translate some Chrome-specific WebExtension APIs over to Firefox. Microsoft Edge can install extensions directly from the Chrome Web Store, but Edge is using the same Blink web engine as Chrome so that makes things easy.
Don’t really care about importing as I never use that feature.
Just retire Gecko and join the Blink bandwagon already, Mozilla. Then you can guarantee 100% Chrome extension compatibility! /s
Not like your browser is getting much attention let alone budget compared to your other woke social justice initiatives.
Hello,
does anyone know if the STG has issues with the sidebar at the moment? I just added it and can not find any option to use it in the sidebar. I am also using an add-on for tree style tab…this might be the source of the problem?
Greetings, Anja
tried typing- about:config -in the search bar -( I want to enable javascript) but it simply will NOT open!
I tried Firefox Translate, but it doesn’t do Chinese or Japanese, and that’s a deal-breaker for me. I uninstalled it and am sticking with the Google Translate extension.
“…Vivaldi and Brave use self-hosted solutions, which still require connections, but offer better privacy than an integration of Google Translate or other third-party translation services would offer.”
While I like Brave as a browser, their translation “solution” just plain sucks. I’d rather have the data sent to Google or Bing, than have a translate feature that just doesn’t work properly. Not only is it not possible to select just a section of text to translate, but to make it worst, most of the time translating the whole page in Brave is either really unbearably slow, or more often than not, it just won’t translate the page at all and displays a “This page couldn’t be translated” error. It’s pretty pointless if their users need to keep using something else to translate pages and have to give up their privacy anyway.
The native translate feature in Firefox sounds like a much better solution than what Brave use.
Great news, thanx FF devs! Hopefully, more languages will be available in the future. So happy!
Floorp comes with its own built-in translator. It’s been like that ever since the first release in fact.
https://floorp.app/download
Article title: Firefox 117: native language translations, last Firefox 102 update and security fixes
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/29/firefox-117-native-language-translations-last-firefox-102-update-and-security-fixes/
I think for now every time I comment on an article I am going to put the title of the article and/or the URL of said article because I am seeing my own comments which are from another Firefox related article but not exactly this one.
In regards to this website Martin does not have administrative access to the back end of the website. It would fall on softonic international to fix it now which seems to be of very low priority.
This might be the straw that broke the camels back for ghacks which is a shame because it had many good comments and articles that go way back. Moving away from it would suck.
Maybe try contacting them here to see if you can get any action.
https://hello.softonic.com/contact/
Can you help me please.
Latest version, they pust their VPN (powered by Mullvad) yet again. Instead of writing version changes. sigh. https://imgur.com/g6N20bN
Luckily I had a recent backup available. Firefox was no longer giving me access to profiles when I reinstalled version 116.03 and was asking me to create a new profile. It asked me to upgrade last night and to my surprise all theJS scripts were gone.
https://github.com/xiaoxiaoflood/firefox-scripts/issues/265
Firewall: “Deny [Firefox] outgoing connections to domain nextdns.io”
Firewall: “Deny [plugin-container] outgoing connections to domain cloudflare-dns.com (including mozilla.cloudflare-dns.com)”
It’s exciting to hear that Mozilla is actively working on a design refresh for their Firefox web browser, internally referred to as Photon. The last major redesign, known as Proton, was introduced in Firefox 57 back in November 2017. Since then, Mozilla has made some interface changes, including the controversial address bar overhaul in Firefox 75 Stable.
While specific details about the design refresh are currently limited, Mozilla has created a meta bug on Bugzilla to track the changes. Although no mockups or screenshots have been shared yet, the bug names provide some insights into the elements that will receive a refresh, such as the address bar, tabs bar, main menu, infobars, doorhangers, context menus, and modals.
The new design is scheduled to be released in Firefox 89, which was initially planned for a mid-2021 release, specifically May 18, 2021. However, as development work is still ongoing, there is a possibility of a delayed release.
@ Zibtek,
I’m already using Photon on Floorp which is a fork of Firefox. Here’s a pix of what it looks like:
https://i.postimg.cc/8PsK7DjV/floorp-photon.png I enabled the menu bar at the top, but you can turn it off if you don’t like it.
Floorp is a Japanese browser based on FF102. I’ve been using it as my default browser ever since ‘owl’ pointed it out on the Ghacks site last year (or was it this year, can’t remember exactly when). In any event it contains many more enhancements than the vanilla version of Firefox. It also comes with searXNG search engine in the list of search engines provided which saves having to install it yourself.
Floorp download: https://floorp.app/en/
My comment is regarding the following,
Article title:
Mozilla patches critical WebP security issue in Firefox and Thunderbird
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/13/mozilla-patches-critical-webp-security-issue-in-firefox-and-thunderbird/#respond
Indeed, today, those patch versions were applied through automatic updates.
However, since I had disabled the “WebP” function, I was not interested in that topic (Google, etc.).
Regarding Thunderbird:
Today finally,
My Thunderbird 102.14.0 (en-US) was updated with “Thunderbird 102.15.1 (x64)” through the automatic update feature.
By the way,
Naturally, it will not be automatically updated to 115 (Supernova).
Anyway,
it is clear from Bugzilla that the bug fixes related to migration from 102 to 115 are not complete, so existing users of “102” should refrain from manually updating to 115.
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/08/thunderbird-102-to-115-upgrades-are-now-enabled/#comment-4573569
Betterbird has been released 115.2.1-bb11 (12 September 2023) . Betterbird make Thunderbird a faithful upstream.
Betterbird: Release Notes
>> betterbird.eu/releasenotes/?locale=en-US&version=115.2.1&channel=default&os=WINNT&buildid=20230911203543
@Martin Brinkmann,
I posted in response to an article published on 2023/09/13.
Article title: Mozilla patches critical WebP security issue in Firefox and Thunderbird. >> ghacks.net/2023/09/13/mozilla-patches-critical-webp-security-issue-in-firefox-and-thunderbird/
However, the link was to an unrelated article published on 2019/09/27.
>> ghacks.net/2019/09/27/how-to-import-tabs-from-chrome-to-firefox-and-vice-versa/
This kind of “disorder of Articles and Comments” has been going on for another month.
Is this an obvious (by Softonic, which operates and manages ghacks.net) act of sabotage against Martin and Ashwin?
It’s really frustrating!
[ My comment is on “Mozilla patches critical WebP security issue in Firefox and Thunderbird” https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/13/mozilla-patches-critical-webp-security-issue-in-firefox-and-thunderbird/ though not directly related to that article ]
What happened to gHacks? When the site was bought out, Martin assured us it wouldn’t go downhill and he’d maintain editorial control, but the AI-written articles are ruining the quality of the site. I’ve been tempted to drop the site from my RSS reader because of this. Is there an RSS feed with only the human-written articles? Individual feeds for each author isn’t a good solution.
Article Title: Mozilla patches critical WebP security issue in Firefox and Thunderbird
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/13/mozilla-patches-critical-webp-security-issue-in-firefox-and-thunderbird/
If anyone was unaware you should download the extension “Don’t Accept WebP” regardless of the patch. WebP is absolute trash that is unnecessary and clearly an issue. I would rather my images be in their native format and not some recompiled trash such as WebP.
I have absolutely no love for the parent company of this website.
I agree, this is so atrocious – most of the time you can even tell by the URL what format the original image was in – this “reconvert-on-the-fly” nonsense is terrible – but especially so when you’re converting a lossy format, which should be avoided as often as possible.
Sometimes you can edit the image URL to get it to send the right image, unfortunately “don’t accept WebP” doesn’t always work – but that’s why they offer a built in conversion, I suppose.
@ Mystique,
Thanks for the tip (about the addon). I wasn’t aware that Webp was a vulnerability.
I read only Martin Brinkmann’s, Mike Turcotte’s, and Ashwin’s articles. Add uBlock Origin news filter for ghacks:
! 2023-09-13 https://www.ghacks.net/
ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
@ https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/13/mozilla-patches-critical-webp-security-issue-in-firefox-and-thunderbird/#comment-4573641
I tried your uBlock filter on Brave snap packaga for Ubuntu, but it doesn’t work, do I need to restart the browser?
I have noticed uBO doesn’t fully work on Brave, for instance the Element Picker can’t pick anything while the Zapper do, but not 100%, Nuke Anything works much better, but it’s only temporarily.
“important address bar change” alright calm down… lol
I have gotten rid of the stupid shield and the “not secure” box, and have it set up so that it always displays the full URL (I think…?).
In a perfect world, it should just always show the full url, no icons, or emojis, or anything like that.
“Users may want to know why Firefox is no longer displaying https:// in the address bar” I’ll bet nobody will notice anything – apart from a select few autists like myself who customise everything and don’t like change.
“Users may want to know why Firefox is no longer displaying https:// in the address bar”
Why, I don’t know either (a breeze of madness or is it of love in the air), but there’s an about:config to handle that as well (Firefox) :
// display all parts of the url in the location bar (do not trim)
pref(“browser.urlbar.trimURLs”, false); // Dfault=true
Things, too many, too often are decided in spite of common sens.
Firefox is always copying whatever Chromium does… it is like they are a Chromium browser without the name and having trouble rendering many websites. In fact, it is like they are getting 400million just for existing and adopt anything Google releases or does, like web extensions, widevine, safe browsing and then visual changes like this.
I like how some people think there is a choice, and the choice is better than the leader… while still failing at basic stuff.
What’s the point of these useless changes? Just show the full address with the protocol at all times and be done with it…
I set the User Agent address bar to always show the entire URI in a unmasked format.
Martin, as of 19 September 2023, the gHacks comments system is still severely mangled. Data subjects have considerable rights conferred on them; where those decisions are likely to affect them.
Let’s start again. “I set the User Agent address bar to always show the entire URI in [an] unmasked format.”
Hallowed be the memory of the Lost Souls.
“HTTPS doesn’t mean safe:
Many people assume that an HTTPS connection means that the site is secure. In fact, HTTPS is increasingly being used by malicious sites, especially phishing ones.”
[https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/https-does-not-mean-safe/20725/]
HTTPS doesn’t mean safe
Many people assume that an HTTPS connection means that the site is secure. In fact, HTTPS is increasingly being used by malicious sites, especially phishing ones.
HTTPS doesn’t mean safe
Many people assume that an HTTPS connection means that the site is secure. In fact, HTTPS is increasingly being used by malicious sites, especially phishing ones.
website still wacked huh?
Article: Firefox 119 will launch with an important address bar change
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/19/firefox-119-will-launch-with-an-important-address-bar-change/
Just one thing regarding the URL bar as it looks like now in latest Firefox, the relatively new feature where some extensions would add their icon inside the URL bar, how bad can it get?
https://imgur.com/uIlWI58
https://postimg.cc/YvYnpzGh
https://ibb.co/QQT584N
ps. uploaded same pic to several links just to make sure some will work.
(For those who can’t see the pic it’s a snapshot showing a URL bar full of extensions, and also Firefox own built in icons that would appear inside the URL bar depending in some cases on which type of website is being viewed, there’s no space left for the actual thing the URL bar is supposed to view, namely the URL address itself)
Yes, I have several extensions on the toolbar, but the menu bar is pretty full and I want to keep some on the toolbar too, and usually Firefox would also push excessive extensions behind a drop-down menu for access to them as well, but as it looks like now the URL bar is given too little space priority, or is there a way to restrict to a minimum URL bar size?
You can modify Firefox with a “profileFolder/chrome/userChrome.css” file:
/* https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS */
/* https://github.com/MrOtherGuy/firefox-csshacks */
@import url(urlbar_info_icons_on_hover.css);
@import url(page_action_buttons_on_hover.css);
@import url(compact_extensions_panel.css);
#urlbar-container:focus-within { min-width: 60vw !important; }
#navigator-toolbox .chromeclass-toolbar-additional { margin-inline: -2px !important; }
#unified-extensions-button { order: 1 !important; }
Well, Mozilla and Firefox are saved because of this and many other changes / ‘news’ in the past days!
A while ago they separated the “Firefox” brand from the “Firefox Browser” brand, now they are abandoning the Firefox brand? Or are they abandoning the Firefox Browser brand? I don’t know.
While that small change would make sense as standalone, it’s unfortunately done in a context where Google (and thus Mozilla) wants to get rid of the URL ultimately and just display search engine data on that bar, going on with that trend of the browser only being a search engine carrier.
Were users forced to use the same account for different Mozilla products ? Maybe those who want their news reading habits to be tracked and monetized by Mozilla Pocket do not want their e-commerce habits to be tracked and monetized by Mozilla Fakespot under the same identity ? This is really starting to look like a Google account. When I think that this Firefox account thing more or less started with just an end-to-end encrypted sync service where Mozilla could not access the data. Now they use accounts to monetize user data. Sigh.
There are probably still drones haunting the web claiming the highly repeated lie that “Mozilla does not even have user personal data” (meaning they only monetized the fuck out of every possible piece of sensitive private user data under other forms, without the risk of breaching GDPR). Well, sure they have, lots of that too.
“users who signed-in using Google or Apple credentials”
Wait, what ?
“Firefox 118 release brings new web translation feature and end of Firefox ESR 102”
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Ugh, is this really their priority? If you want to provide translation, if you want to do a great job, it takes lots of time and effort, and you’ll have better luck if you severely limit the number of languages – this is a big job to provide decent translation, any POC can provide poor translation.
Curious how good it is, and how much of the firefox time/resources are being wasted on this that could be used elsewhere.
Great extension, shame firefox is just pants, now all a sudden in 118 I can no longer copy the URL address in firefox and paste it in any other app.
All other apps works perfectly fine, I can even copy and paste from a web page within firefox, but not from the URL bar…. idiots.
Err, really, are you sure this is a real problem?
I don’t have 118, but if you’re on a page, you should be able to highlight and copy that URL.
One thing I noticed on chrome recently is it won’t let you copy any of the URL auto-complete suggestions unless you actually click on one and go to it, after you do, you can then copy it,
I want to hear more about this as I may be going to 118 at some point, on the lookout for “breaking changes” such as this.
Nice, just a suggestion, would be nice to see a screenshot of the translate feature in this article so we have an idea of what if looks like.
Other than that, great article!
Firefox is not good as before.
thanks