727668 - Show bookmarks from the bookmarks toolbar in the new tab page

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Dave Camp (:dcamp)]

Chrome shows a stand-in for the bookmarks toolbar in its new tab page when the bookmarks toolbar is hidden.  It's useful.

Comment 1

[u428464]

Could be part of new/home tab merge/redesign.

Comment 2

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

Mass-move to Firefox::New Tab Page.

Filter on new-tab-page-component.

Comment 3

[Samuel Jun]

For those waiting for this feature, I created an add-on to replace the new tab page with bookmarks: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/new-tab-bookmarks/.

The benefit of this feature is the ability to keep save vertical space while still allowing easy access to the bookmarks. Since getting used to Chrome's inclusion of bookmarks in the new tab page, it became a big part of my workflow. Apart from using autocomplete in the URL bar, I'm constantly opening a new tab to click on a bookmark.

Comment 6

[coder-ant]

Here's a take on bookmark bar in new tab page in the form of an addon. Feedback/thoughts welcome
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ephemeral-bookmark-bar

Comment 7

[Vlad]

Any progress?

@code-ant, your extension is closed-source and needs a lot of permissions.

Comment 9

[josiasmat]

+1

Frankly, this feature is the only reason that keeps me using Google Chrome.

Comment 12

[sivapvarma]

This bug clearly improves the UX of new tab page particularly on devices with small screens like laptops and netbooks. Please make this a priority

Comment 13

[Asif Youssuff]

Saw another add-on recommended for this (that replaces the default new tab page): https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/new2tab/

Comment 15

[GaryEarthling]

Showing and hiding the Bookmarks Bar can be accomplished using the userChrome.css file but there are a lot of disadvantages to doing it that way. Having a setting would be far easier.

Disadvantages:
(1) Takes a lot of steps to enable. For example: https://www.userchrome.org/how-create-userchrome-css.html
(2) CSS solutions often break between Firefox versions.
(3) userChrome.css isn't synced, which means the steps need to be performed on every computer.

Comment 16

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Attachment: Bug 727668 - Show bookmarks toolbar on the new tab page.

This adds the ability to force the bookmarks toolbar to appear on all pages. The checkbox in the toolbar context menu will reflect if the toolbar will appear outside of the newtab page. The toolbar will always appear on the newtab page. Profiles that already had the toolbar showing will have a migration to keep their experience unchanged.

Comment 17

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/bd318d959528
Show bookmarks toolbar on the new tab page. r=Gijs

Comment 18

[danmattera1]

(In reply to Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me) from comment #16)

Created attachment 9173784 [details]
Bug 727668 - Show bookmarks toolbar on the new tab page.

This adds the ability to force the bookmarks toolbar to appear on all pages. The checkbox in the toolbar context menu will reflect if the toolbar will appear outside of the newtab page. The toolbar will always appear on the newtab page. Profiles that already had the toolbar showing will have a migration to keep their experience unchanged.

Just curious-- in the comments you added to firefox.js (starting at line 1.12) you mentioned the fact that the bookmarks toolbar can also be toggled with a keyboard shortcut. Is this something you've added with this bug? I'm on the latest version of Release (MacOS) and currently do not have this ability available by default.

"
+pref("browser.toolbars.bookmarks.persist_open", false);
+// When true, this pref will always show the bookmarks bar on
+// the New Tab Page, allowing showing/hiding via keyboard shortcut,
"

Comment 19

[Pulsebot]

Backout by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/3c17e3309eac
Backed out changeset bd318d959528 for causing multiple failures

Comment 20

[Alexandru Michis [:malexandru]]

Backed out changeset bd318d959528 (Bug 727668) for causing multiple failures

Backout link: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/3c17e3309eacd51f592e2f77c1fbbb35797f7157

Push with failures:
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=autoland&group_state=expanded&resultStatus=testfailed%2Cbusted%2Cexception%2Crunnable&tochange=3c17e3309eacd51f592e2f77c1fbbb35797f7157&fromchange=d6c9e691db15a4ed7388d0338f29b8af8907b32d

Failure logs:
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#?job_id=316331958&repo=autoland
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=316311193&repo=autoland&lineNumber=6271
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=316332283&repo=autoland&lineNumber=3100
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=316329080&repo=autoland&lineNumber=45125
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=316319700&repo=autoland&lineNumber=6913
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=316318932&repo=autoland&lineNumber=1725
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=316318744&repo=autoland&lineNumber=6565
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=316319294&repo=autoland&lineNumber=3969
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=316325071&repo=autoland&lineNumber=3690
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=316324117&repo=autoland&lineNumber=21558

Comment 21

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

(In reply to danmattera1 from comment #18)

Just curious-- in the comments you added to firefox.js (starting at line 1.12) you mentioned the fact that the bookmarks toolbar can also be toggled with a keyboard shortcut. Is this something you've added with this bug? I'm on the latest version of Release (MacOS) and currently do not have this ability available by default.

See bug 1328637.

Comment 22

[ahmed.hindy96]

so a ticket was opened 9 years ago and this still isn't implemented?

Comment 23

[Hossein Mortazavi]

(In reply to ahmed.hindy96 from comment #22)

so a ticket was opened 9 years ago and this still isn't implemented?

Yeah, it's time to ditch Mozilla and Firefox for good after being a loyal customer for more than 15 years.

Comment 24

[Savvy Raghuvanshi]

It looks like the two tests on line numbers 6565 and 3969 make an incorrect assumption that resize events should not be fired on new tab page? Am I correct that this assumption should no longer hold?

Comment 25

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

(In reply to Savvy Raghuvanshi from comment #24)

It looks like the two tests on line numbers 6565 and 3969 make an incorrect assumption that resize events should not be fired on new tab page? Am I correct that this assumption should no longer hold?

No, the assumption should still hold. I believe that the resize test failure was unrelated and potentially an intermittent test failure. The failure related to "3969" is a performance test that checks to see we are not making any unexpected UI changes upon opening new tabs. That test failed because I hadn't updated the expected behavior now that the toolbar will appear in a new tab.

Comment 27

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Attachment: Bug 727668 - Add an options to show the toolbar on the new tab page, always, or never.

Comment 28

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/5b6a14b4e16e
Show bookmarks toolbar on the new tab page. r=Gijs,fluent-reviewers

Comment 29

[Narcis Beleuzu [:NarcisB]]

Backed out for bc failures on browser_aboutNewTab_bookmarksToolbar.js

Backout link: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/076e54924c59069d5af9f347e407e8f6e8dcf833
Log link: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer?job_id=319038789&repo=autoland&lineNumber=1800

Please also check this wdspec failure https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer?job_id=319043549&repo=autoland&lineNumber=126105

Comment 30

[Narcis Beleuzu [:NarcisB]]

Please also check wpt failures like:

1. https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=319049430&repo=autoland&lineNumber=4069
2. https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=319047045&repo=autoland&lineNumber=1943
3. https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=319047047&repo=autoland&lineNumber=4080

Comment 31

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/ba261cf25651
Show bookmarks toolbar on the new tab page. r=Gijs,fluent-reviewers

Comment 32

[Alexandru Michis [:malexandru]]

Backed out changeset ba261cf25651 (Bug 727668) for causing marionette failures in test_screenshot.py

Backout link: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/5e764ff4271f89cae62c1480149459e80bbe704c

Push with failures: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=autoland&group_state=expanded&searchStr=windows%2C10%2Cx64%2Copt%2Ctest-windows10-64%2Fopt-marionette-e10s%2Cmn&tochange=b0c83856ebcf4548dfaf208d32c58380262b2628&fromchange=614856104da48b4dbbe572aea806d97bf6c0c7bc&selectedTaskRun=JwoAPRLyTIy0tnBueQ7JWQ.0

Failure log: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=319330464&repo=autoland&lineNumber=30251

Update: also seeing webdriver failures
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=autoland&group_state=expanded&fromchange=794802a3746696a76f3c19252c30d1ccbcb7f8e3&searchStr=os%2Cx%2C10.14%2Copt%2Cweb%2Cplatform%2Ctests%2Ctest-macosx1014-64%2Fopt-web-platform-tests-wdspec-headless-e10s%2Cwdh2&tochange=b0c83856ebcf4548dfaf208d32c58380262b2628&selectedTaskRun=AKG5KS5FSgWAh1HQoQzaNQ.0

Comment 33

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Henrik, can you help me out here? I don't know why these tests would fail. Do screenshots or some other fixed asset need updating?

Comment 34

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Given that this is a perma failure I assume you can also reproduce it locally? If yes, would you mind running the specific Marionette test with the following option so that we can see the screenshot data not truncated:

./mach marionette-test -vv --gecko-log - --setpref="marionette.log.truncate=false" testing/marionette/harness/marionette_harness/tests/unit/test_screenshot.py

Note that I haven't seen the new UI yet, so I cannot say how it would look like and how it actually affects the screenshot feature of Marionette. Interesting is that we have the new tab page turned off when running Marionette tests, and as I read this feature is for that page only. So it would help a lot to actually see the screenshots as created by Marionette.

Note that given by the WebDriver spec the boundaries for the screenshot are defined by the document's element rectangle of the top-level browsing context.

Comment 35

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/45bbeabb0c89
Show bookmarks toolbar on the new tab page. r=Gijs,fluent-reviewers,marionette-reviewers,whimboo

Comment 36

[Bogdan Tara[:bogdan_tara | bogdant]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/45bbeabb0c89

Comment 37

[Davyd McColl]

Is there any way to disable this behavior? I've disabled the bookmarks toolbar years ago because I never use it, but now I'm getting some old synced bookmarks toolbar popping up on every new tab! Is my only resolution to manually delete all items from the bar? I get that some people want this -- there's plenty of +1's in this thread -- but I've purposely removed the bookmarks toolbar because it's (for me) clutter.

Comment 38

[Davyd McColl]

I see this setting in about:config: browser.toolbars.bookmarks.visibility, with the current value "newtab". However, changing this value seems to have no effect. I've tried "none" and "false".

Comment 39

[clessili]

I had lost all hope of seeing this in an official release, so I made an extension to manage bookmarks in the new tab page: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/umibo/
it can show bookmarks from the Toolbar, Other, Menu and Mobile folders, and has a field for additional CSS rules.

(In reply to Davyd McColl from comment #37)

Is there any way to disable this behavior?
Right click on the toolbar -> Bookmarks Toolbar -> Never

Comment 40

[krystian3w]

Is there any way to disable this behavior?

Right click on the toolbar -> Bookmarks Toolbar -> Never

or just use never in browser.toolbars.bookmarks.visibility.

---

No better is use integer:

• 0 - "never",
• 1 - "newtab",
• 2 - "always"

?

Comment 41

[Jessilyn Davis]

:jaws - can you show the UI of what this looks like? It looks like this bookmarks toolbar is off by default in Release, but is the plan to have it on by default (for only new tab?) in Fx 84?

Comment 42

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Attachment: Screenshot of toolbar context menu

Yes, the toolbar is off by default in Release 82. In Firefox 82 the toolbar will get enabled if:

• bookmarks are imported to the toolbar
• a user saves a bookmark to the toolbar
• a user manually enables the toolbar through one of the various toolbar menus

In Firefox 84 the toolbar will be changed to "Only on New Tab" unless the user already had the toolbar visible in which case their setting will now be "Always".

I am attaching a screenshot of the change to the toolbar context menu. Note that this change is also reflected in the View menu seen at the top of the screen on macOS and the "Alt-menu" on Windows. This change is also reflected in Customize mode in the list of toolbars at the bottom of the window.

Comment 43

[Marius Coman [:mcoman], Ecosystem QA]

I have verified this enhancement and I can confirm the following:

• The "Bookmarks Toolbar" is displayed only on the "New Tab" if the "Only on New Tab" option is checked.
• The "Bookmarks Toolbar" is displayed on all tabs if the "Always" option is checked.
• The "Bookmarks Toolbar" is displayed is not displayed at all if the "Never" option is checked.
  Verified using the latest Firefox Nightly (84.0a1 Build ID - 20201029095639) installed on Windows 10 x64, Mac 10.15, and Ubuntu 18.04 x64.

Comment 44

[Georg Vogt]

Relates to: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1677733

Comment 45

[flat]

Perhaps this is it's own feature request, but should this not also show on the home page? Especially if one has it set to blank. It is a minor inconvenience to have to start Firefox and then open a new tab for the bookmarks to show before closing the "home" page tab and navigating away. The behavior of chromium based browsers also includes the bookmarks on the home page.

Comment 47

[Uri Shabtay]

(In reply to flat from comment #45)

Perhaps this is it's own feature request, but should this not also show on the home page? Especially if one has it set to blank. It is a minor inconvenience to have to start Firefox and then open a new tab for the bookmarks to show before closing the "home" page tab and navigating away. The behavior of chromium based browsers also includes the bookmarks on the home page.

you can find it in the preferences -- home -- new windows and tabs
you could choose to open a specific home page for every new tab or the firefox new tab page

Comment 48

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to flat from comment #45)

Perhaps this is it's own feature request, but should this not also show on the home page? Especially if one has it set to blank. It is a minor inconvenience to have to start Firefox and then open a new tab for the bookmarks to show before closing the "home" page tab and navigating away. The behavior of chromium based browsers also includes the bookmarks on the home page.

It'll work (ie the toolbar will show) if you set it to show "Firefox Home" instead of a blank page. We'd like to make it work for blank pages too, but "about:blank" has a lot of other uses (by websites, esp.) and so it's technically more difficult - when we tried initially it broke at least 5 different scenarios (bug 1673363, bug 1675145, bug 1675143, bug 1675148, bug 1675147), so we disabled it for now. Enabling it there is bug 1676492.

Comment 49

[GaryEarthling]

Attachment: FF84 - Expecting vs Seeing

Comment 50

[GaryEarthling]

Just did a fresh install of FF84 on a new machine and don't see the "Only on New Tab" option. Screenshot of what I'm expecting vs what I'm seeing attached. Is there something I need to do to enable it? Bookmarks are present on the Bookmarks Toolbar.

Comment 51

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to GaryEarthling from comment #50)

Just did a fresh install of FF84 on a new machine and don't see the "Only on New Tab" option. Screenshot of what I'm expecting vs what I'm seeing attached. Is there something I need to do to enable it? Bookmarks are present on the Bookmarks Toolbar.

This is being rolled out slowly on the 84 branch. It's default-on in 85. If you want to opt-in on 84, flip the pref browser.toolbars.bookmarks.2h2020 to true.

Comment 52

[GaryEarthling]

Are there plans to roll this out to Firefox on Ubuntu as well? I'm using FF 75 and don't have the option. Tried setting browser.toolbars.bookmarks.2h2020 to true as well but it didn't have any effect. Thanks!

Comment 53

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to GaryEarthling from comment #52)

Are there plans to roll this out to Firefox on Ubuntu as well? I'm using FF 75 and don't have the option. Tried setting browser.toolbars.bookmarks.2h2020 to true as well but it didn't have any effect. Thanks!

Firefox 75 is now a year old and very insecure, so I hope that's some kind of typo...

I don't know really know what version of Ubuntu you're on, but from looking at https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=firefox&searchon=names&suite=groovy&section=all it would seem that you should be able to get 85, unless you're on a specific architecture where you need to use the ports distributed version? Or perhaps you're on an older LTS version of Ubuntu?

The details of which version of Firefox different Ubuntu versions provide you with via apt and other builtin distro tools is one to take up with canonical, I'm afraid - we have no direct influence over it. Assuming you're on an architecture for which we distribute builds ourselves, you should be able to download the most recent version of Firefox directly from Mozilla at https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/ and install that.

Comment 54

[GaryEarthling]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #53)

Firefox 75 is now a year old and very insecure, so I hope that's some kind of typo...

Thanks :Gijs. Was on a laptop I hadn't used in a while. Didn't realize it was running an older version of Ubuntu. Updated to the latest release - problem solved. :-)