2076296 - Dropdown panel selection in new sidebar: cannot navigate away from bookmarks tab (and AI chatbot tab)

Status: ASSIGNED

(Firefox :: Sidebar, defect, P1)

Description

[dusty-2011]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:156.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/156.0

Steps to reproduce

In Firefox 156.0.1 I went to the Customize sidebar tab of the sidebar. I unchecked the option Open tools from sidebar. This causes the navigation through the various tabs/tools of the sidebar to become very unreliable. Because the dropdown selector on some of the tabs simply does not work. On the History tab, on the Passwords tab and on the Tabs from other devices tab the dropdown selector works fine. But on the bookmarks tab the dropdown selector is fully bugged. The chevron does not display after the name Bookmarks. And the name Bookmarks is also unclickable. As a result, I cannot actually navigate away from the Bookmarks tab using the mouse. I can only navigate away using the keyboard. I verified that I could successfully navigate away to the History tab using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+H.
The dropdown selector is for me personally also bugged for the AI chatbot tab. That is probably caused because I have not selected the AI chatbot of my choice yet. I am greeted with a screen that offers me to choose between Anthropic Claude, ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Mistral Vibe. The dropdown selector at the top is bugged, and I cannot navigate away to a different tab using the mouse. Although the chevron behind AI chatbot does display, the entire line is displayed in dark grey (it is greyed out) and the line is unclickable and I cannot navigate to a different tab using the mouse. But I verified that I could navigate away using the keyboard. For example, I could press Ctrl+B to go to the Bookmarks tab. But since that tab also has a bugged dropdown selector, I had to press Ctrl+H to go to the History tab to get a working dropdown selector. From there I could navigate to the Customize sidebar tab to once again enable the option labelled Open tools from sidebar. With this option enabled, navigating between the various tabs/tools does work reliably.

Actual results

The dropdown selector is bugged for the Bookmarks tab, and because I have not selected the AI Chatbot that I prefer yet the dropdown selector is also bugged for the AI chatbot tab. I cannot navigate away to a different tab/tool using the mouse. I can only navigate to a different tab/tool using a keyboard shortcut.

Expected results

The dropdown selector should reliably work for every single tab/tool. I should never have to use a keyboard shortcut to navigate away from the tab/tool, because the navigation with the mouse is broken.

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/phasing-out-the-older-version-of-firefox-sidebar-in-2026/td-p/115477/page/2
Citation from asafko:
**With Nova coming out in 157 and as we have not been supporting and testing the old sidebar for a while, we will be turning the updated sidebar on for tWith Firefox 157. If you were on the old version of the sidebar, your layout will default to the dropdown selector, as in the old version. **

Defaulting to the dropdown selector for the people still using the old version of the sidebar is an absolutely terrible idea!!! A very large amount of people is going to be using the dropdown selector then, and it is heavily bugged!!! So if it is still possible to change this before the release of Firefox 157, then you have to respond immediately!!!

Comment 1

[dusty-2011]

This was regressed by Bug 2047653 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2047653), because there the dropdown panel selection was introduced in the new sidebar.

Is it still possible to prevent the dropdown panel selector from getting enabled by default for the people who were using the old sidebar? This is going to happen very soon, when Firefox 157 launches, as I already explained above. But because the dropdown panel selector is very heavily bugged, this should be prevented by all means. Unchecking the option Open tools from sidebar causes the navigation with the mouse to become bugged as described above, and so the option _Open tools from sidebar _ should be ENABLED BY DEFAULT FOR EVERY SINGLE FIREFOX USER!!!

Comment 2

[Hackbot]

bookmarksSidebar.xhtml draws its own XUL header with a bare html:h4 and no sidebar-panel-switcher, and that legacy panel is the one loaded whenever sidebar.updatedBookmarks.enabled is false, which is everything but Nightly per firefox.js, so in hide-launcher mode Bookmarks shows an unclickable title with no chevron while History, Synced Tabs and Passwords get the dropdown from the lit sidebar-panel-header.mjs.

For the chatbot, chat.css gives the onboarding overlay z-index: 2, added by bug 2056384 (3daf78ed4f2f) after bug 2047653 wrote the rule at #356-363 that keeps the header above it with only z-index: 1, so the translucent overlay paints over the switcher and close button and swallows their clicks.

Fix: Add a sidebar-panel-switcher view="viewBookmarksSidebar" to the legacy bookmarks header and hide its h4 under @media -moz-pref("sidebar.visibility", "hide-launcher") in sidebar.css, then raise the onboarding-mode header above the overlay's stacking level. Note that browser_hide_sidebar.js pushes sidebar.updatedBookmarks.enabled=true in add_setup, so the shipping bookmarks configuration is currently untested in this mode.

Suggested severity: S2. Bookmarks is the default panel and the chatbot onboarding screen blocks its own close button, leaving no mouse path out of either once "Open tools from sidebar" is unchecked, and recovering requires knowing a keyboard shortcut.

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Comment 3

[dusty-2011]

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/phasing-out-the-older-version-of-firefox-sidebar-in-2026/td-p/115477/page/2

Citation from Asafko:

We are also keeping the old implementation of the bookmarks panel ON in release for now (its new version is already ON by default in Nightly).

The analysis from the Hackbot, together with the citation from Ania (Asafko) is all that is needed to know that the dropdown panel selector is bugged on Firefox 157 as well. I don't even have to test it.

So, without any corrective actions taken, as soon as people get the automatic update on 14:00 UTC, a lot of complaints are going to be coming in. A lot of people are still using the old sidebar right now. After they are upgraded to Firefox 157, they will get the dropdown selector by default. When they open the sidebar, they will probably get to see the Bookmarks panel first, because as the Hackbot mentions this is the default panel and it is probably for many people also the last used panel. And then, if they don't remember a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+H to switch to the History panel) they will not be able to navigate away from the Bookmarks panel. That is probably going to upset some people. And even if they do manage to navigate away from the Bookmarks tab, they might not be able to find the preference Open tools from sidebar by themselves. And without finding that preference in the Customize sidebar tab, they are stuck with a broken dropdown selector.

It is 14:00 UTC in about an hour from now. Has anything already been done, or can anything still be done to ensure that the people who are using the old sidebar right now do not get a lot of trouble from the upgrade to Firefox 157?

Comment 4

[dusty-2011]

I just got automatically upgraded to Firefox 157. I immediately tested to see if I could reproduce the bug there as well, and I could perfectly reproduce the bug.

I could perfectly reproduce both aspects of the bug:

1. On the Bookmarks panel, I could not navigate away to a different panel using the mouse, because the panel switcher is non-functional.
2. On the AI chatbot panel, I could not navigate away to a different panel using the mouse, because the onboarding overlay where you can choose the chatbot you prefer somehow swallows the clicks away and makes the panel switcher unclickable.

I posted a short summary of the most important part of the bug (the bugged panel switcher on the Bookmarks tab of the sidebar) on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1wt9asa/comment/pcsf3tx/?context=3

I posted the summary as a comment in the thread Firefox 157.0, See All New Features, Updates and Fixes. I also included the following workaround there:

Navigate to the History panel using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+H. From there, use the panel switcher at the top of the panel to navigate to the Customize sidebar panel. Here you have to enable the option labelled Open tools from sidebar. Now the browser will display a strip on the left side of the sidebar, where you find various icons that you can use to navigate between the various sidebar panels in a perfectly reliable way.
Ctrl+H is the default keyboard shortcut for opening the History panel, if you changed it into anything else, then use your custom shortcut. If you forgot your custom shortcut, look it up in about:keyboard.

Comment 5

[Kelly Cochrane [:kcochrane]]

Thanks for reporting. There are two workarounds for this currently:
You can enable the new bookmarks sidebar panel by navigating to about:config and enabling the sidebar.updatedBookmarks.enabled pref. The new bookmarks panel works with this new drop down switcher.
Or you can re-check the "Open tools from sidebar" option in the Customize sidebar panel, but we will add a fix for this soon.

Comment 6

[Sarah Clements [:sclements]]

[Tracking Requested - why for this release]: We want to get this into 158 beta if possible.

Comment 7

[Jonathan Sudiaman [:jsudiaman]]

Attachment: Bug 2076296 - Add revamped sidebar switcher to the legacy bookmarks panel, and make it accessible from GenAI onboarding. r?#sidebar-reviewers

Comment 9

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The bug is marked as tracked for firefox158 (beta) and tracked for firefox159 (nightly). However, the bug still has low severity.

:pluk, could you please increase the severity for this tracked bug? If you disagree with the tracking decision, please talk with the release managers.

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.