1386688 - URL-bar dropdown can no longer be hidden and covers up webpage content

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[Greg]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:37.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/54.0

Steps to reproduce:

This bug is in Firefox v57.0a1

Traditionally, it was possible to stop the appearance of a URL-bar dropdown in Firefox by going to about:preferences#privacy and disabling "History, Bookmarks, and Open tabs" under the LOCATION BAR heading. But this no longer works in v57.


Actual results:

Despite disabling "History, Bookmarks, and Open tabs" under the LOCATION BAR heading in v57, Firefox still presents a huge dropdown that serves no useful purpose. The dropdown is superfluous. And it covers up webpage content (at the top of the page) that people may need to reference while typing into the URL-bar. (screenshot attached).


Expected results:

Web-browsers should not FORCE the appearance of a dropdown onto users. Users should be given a way to prevent these "pop-ups." 

Just about every browsing session I engage in, I manually copy things that are not clickable or highlightable from a webpage into the URL-bar in order to record a momentary note or in preparation to run a search. Having a dropdown open whenever I start typing often makes this practice impossible because it covers up what I'm trying to view on the webpage.

The problem is only marginally better with the Search-Box because even here (since the introduction of the One-Off buttons, which I dislike) a dropdown appears.

Prior to the One-Off buttons, I would always use the Search-box for these activities. Since the introduction of the One-Off buttons made using the Search-box more troublesome, I switched to the URL-bar and deactivated its dropdown by unchecking "History, Bookmarks, and Open tabs." Now Mozilla is removing this also and apparently feels it is okay to FORCE these unwanted dropdowns on its users. I kindly ask for Mozilla to reconsider this practice. I have been a Firefox user for a long time (since version 2). I love the recent changes Firefox is making (e.g., return to rectangular tabs, e10s, webextensions, etc), but I am very displeased by recent changes to the Search-Box and URL-bar and hope Mozilla will accommodate the many users like me that do not want things covering up webpage content while we are working.

Please allow users to disable dropdowns from the URL-bar and/or Search-box. There are many, many instances where people need to continue to see the webpage while typing into input boxes on the URL-bar.

This bug represents a huge problem for my everyday use of the Firefox web-browser. I beg Mozilla to consider the harm these changes represent to your user base.

Comment 1

[Greg]

Attachment: Screenshot

Note presence of URL-bar dropdown.

Comment 2

[Panos Astithas (he/him) [:past] (please ni?)]

This kind of customization is best served by an add-on.