Closed Bug 1650828 Opened 4 years ago Closed 4 years ago

In Address bar, search history not displayed unless Top Sites are selected.

Categories

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

78 Branch
defect

Tracking

()

RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: spmzapper, Unassigned)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/78.0

Steps to reproduce:

Click on address bar showed most used addresses plus unwanted top sites. Went into options and removed "Top Sites" from address bar suggest. Now nothing shows up when clicking on Address bar. If I add "Top Sites" back to Address bar, I get both, but I don't want so-called "Top Sites" to appear !!!

Expected results:

Click on Address bar should show most used sites, nothing else.

Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.

Component: Untriaged → Address Bar

The described behavior is the expected one. We'll provide alternatives to access history/bookmarks, but in general you can customize Top Sites in the New Tab Page (or about:home) to your likes, included removing all the pinned pages, at which point they will behavior more or less like the old list.

Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 4 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX

Your rely makes no sense. My new tab page is a blank page. My Firefox home page settings are all unchecked. But when I click on the address bar, I get "search with Google", "search with Amazon" (something I never do!!!), "Live YouTube TV", my home page. I just want this back to what it was in the previous versions, why did it get changed?

And another thing, before you say "search with Google" is there for faster access, I don't need that, I have a search bar for that.

(In reply to Zapper from comment #4)

And another thing, before you say "search with Google" is there for faster access, I don't need that, I have a search bar for that.

Those entries are added by default to teach users it's possible to add pinned search engines to Top Sites, they are not intended to promote search, nor they are sponsored. The urlbar just inherits them from the New Tab Page.
The idea behind using Top Sites is that they are fully customizable by the user (add/remove/reorder), while the old list was not customizable at all (apart from micro-managing history). If there's no pinned site in Top Sites, the list is pretty much the same as before.
You don't need to use the New Tab Page in general, apart from customizing this list once in a while. You can use about:home if you use a blank new tab page, about:home always points to that page.
In the future we plan to allow modifying Top Sites directly from the urlbar, but that's not yet implemented.

They are added by default, how do I get rid of them (by default)? You say Top Sites are fully customizable by the user, when I go to about:Home, I find no way to edit the content of Top Sites, only to select or not select.

When you hover a top site there is a menu appearing on the top right corner with options to remove/unpin, you can reorder them using drag & drop.

Never having used the "Firefox Home Screen" before, I never saw this previously. That appears to be the only place it exists. As I said above, my New Tab is a blank page. After changing that and adding Top Sites to the Firefox home, I found it. Do not assume that people use that page, please. That did fix the problem. Thank you.

Yep, that's why we want to make the list customizable directly from the urlbar.

Hi,

I have the same annoying issue. 'Top sites' are shown that I neither need nor want to be there and when I disable them the browser history will not show when I click on the address bar. This means, unless I type a 'space', than it shows up.

Excuse me if this discussion wasn't of any help for me, I'm not a native speaker and might have missed something.
I tried to follow what Zapper had helped but I can't find any menus when hovering over top sites, no matter what page I'm on. I found no options to remove or unpin or whatever.
The very obvious place to find such options, the 'options', aren't of any help too, obviously. On the contrary it caused a bug, which remains unfixed. Google couldn't help me either, that's why I felt forced to join bugzilla. Found this report, but still couldn't solve my problem.

This might have been meant to be intuitive and modern, but what's the point in trying to 'teach' people how to use a new 'feature' if they do not understand the 'lesson'? Because the lesson seems to be visible and audible only if you're sitting in the very right place in the class room holding your head in the exact right angle (aka using Firefox in the one way where you may be able to find what you are looking for)?
Before making this list customizable via the address bar why not make it easily accessible in the regular option menu, the natural place to look for customizations anyway? Too old-school? Too logical? If something is not as easily understandable and intuitive as intented, it should be abandoned as it failed its goal.

And I do not understand why this was set to 'resolved wontfix'. If opting out 'top sites' result in a missing browser history, although suggested top sites (default) and browser history should not have any connection, there, to me, is a bug. Or a misconception.
Viewing one's browser history should to my very basic understanding be completely independent of made or not made customizations regarding something like this top sites feature.
That the history does appear after typing a space in the address bar to me makes it even more obvious that there IS a bug which prevents the history to be shown initially and it shouldn't be too hard to actually fix it. The original report contained two connected problems (unwanted top sites and missing browser history after opting them out [the most natural way to get rid of them, if opting them out is offered in the menu] but it seems to me the one with the browser history got ignored completely, while this was the actual origin of the user's problem. Telling Zapper how to get rid of them sites in another way than just opting them out does not solve the bug that appeared. It just helps him to happily live without something he never wanted.
And a month later this bug still remains, because this platform, to me as a new member, seems to act more like a regular support platform that tries to help customers with their problems, to work around the problem, not to solve bugs.

When I joined, Mozilla/Bugzilla said something like 'no bug is too small to report it. Even small bugs can cause bigger problems', in my native language. My knowledge in programming is very very limited, but I can imagine if opting out something in the option menu affects parts of the browser that should be independent of the disabled option, this could have the potential of causing bigger problems if not solved and maybe even repeated.
If the bug would have been fixed instead of worked around, other users would not have to work around it, too, following this discussion.
And most important, if the bug would have been fixed in the first place, you would not have to read my all too long text (*) and feel criticized.

*As I said, I'm not a native speaker and it's hard for me to put my thoughts down and explain them in a short way that still transports what I'm trying to say.

Hopefully I can explain it for you.

In Tools/Options/Home, change your "New Tabs" location to "Firefox Home (default)

Under that selection, under "Firefox Home content", check "Top Sites".

Now open a new tab. The added sites will be shown along with your history. Put your pointer on an icon you wish to remove, and a circle with 3 dots will show in the upper right of the icon. Move your pointer to the icon and click on it. A menu will appear that will allow you to remove that icon from the top site list.

When you are done. close the tab, set your "new tab" selection back to what you want, and it should work like you expect when you click on the address bar.

I hope that explains it for you.

Zapper

Yes, finally I got it. I had to check both, top sites on home content and address bar. Didn't help that the browser language is set to my native one. Thanks, Zapper!

So, workaround helped me, too, but it doesn't change the circumstance that your reported bug regarding browser history never got fixed.

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