313299 - remove 'go menu' in Firefox or hide it by default

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Menus, enhancement)

Description

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc (PTO until April 26)]

The "Go menu" is pretty much useless nowadays, it's more a historical remnant of
the first versions of Mosaic/Netscape than anything else. It has also been
removed from IE7 and Opera for this reason.

I think hidding it by default (with a pref in about:config to show it for those
who  really want it) would benefit most users by removing some clutter in the UI.

It could be nice for 1.5, or 1.5.1 if it is too late for 1.5.

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Good heavens no! :)
You could easily hide it with a line in userChrome.css , for example this should
work:
menu[label="Go"]
 {display: none !important;}
or there will be an extension (CompactMenu) with a similar function.

Comment 2

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc (PTO until April 26)]

Ria, I make this RFE precisely to avoid this hack, 99.99% of users don't know
anything about userChrome, about:config or how to create an extension. Since
this menu is useless for today's web, it makes more sense to hide it by default
and allow geeks to show it via userChome than to force it to end-users.

The idea behind Firefox is to make it clean and simple to end-users and to allow
advanced users to tune the browser to fit their taste, not the other way around :)

Comment 3

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

One of the things I appreciate most in Firefox is the Go-menu. Maybe something
like this could be built-in: http://img490.imageshack.us/img490/2979/menus6ny.png
But I would show all menus by default.
I would also appreciate the possibility to make the Go-menu longer (one of the
things I searched for a long time in vain when I started using Firefox (Phoenix)
a long time ago). Although it takes a few seconds to open it for the first time
with 30 or more history-items.
Hm, I don't know those simple users. Never seen them. :)

Comment 4

[Jo Hermans]

There would still need to be a way to open the history, maybe in the View or
Tools menu. And the backward and forward menuitems need to be moved too, they're
used when you don't have a toolbar (kiosks for instance).

Comment 5

[Markus Faßbender]

I must agree with Pascal. For nearly 95% of the users, the "Go" menu is useless. I never used it.

As a compromise for those who need it, we can put it under "Edit" und the "History" under "Tools". But I think it's not so important that it should be a main menu.

Comment 6

[Jo Hermans]

The changes in "Places" will rename the Go-menu to 'History', flesh out the menu, and will focus on the history of the selected tab. I don't think is can be removed anymore, becuase it will the only access to history. WONTFIX ? (depending on the final desing of Places)

http://wiki.mozilla.org/FX2_Visual_Update/User_Interface_Design
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Places:User_Interface#History_Menu