942097 - cannot customize menu bar

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 938985

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, defect)

Description

[Jonathan Baron]

For several years I have put the location window (address bar, url bar - but what I mean is the input where I enter the url, not the entire bar) into the menu bar, so that I have only a single bar on top. This is very helpful because of "wide screens" (actually short screens), which put a premium on vertical space. I did this by using the "customize" function and dragging the location window into the menu bar.

Now I cannot customize the menu bar at all. This happened at the same time as browser.tabs.autoHide ceased to function, so that now I have three bars on top instead of one. I can get it down to two by removing the menu bar, which comes back when I need it (but this creates difficulty for others in my household who do not use the short-cut keys).

Most of the menu bar is wasted space. It would be extremely helpful to restore the capacity to customize it by adding to it, so as to remove another toolbar on top.

(I have already added my voice to those who also want browser.tabs.autoHide restored, bug 908720. But the present report is a different issue, with the same overall negative effect.)

Comment 1

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Jonathan Baron from comment #1)
> For several years I have put the location window (address bar, url bar - but
> what I mean is the input where I enter the url, not the entire bar) into the
> menu bar, so that I have only a single bar on top. This is very helpful
> because of "wide screens" (actually short screens), which put a premium on
> vertical space. I did this by using the "customize" function and dragging
> the location window into the menu bar.
> 
> Now I cannot customize the menu bar at all. This happened at the same time
> as browser.tabs.autoHide ceased to function, so that now I have three bars
> on top instead of one. I can get it down to two by removing the menu bar,
> which comes back when I need it (but this creates difficulty for others in
> my household who do not use the short-cut keys).
> 
> Most of the menu bar is wasted space. It would be extremely helpful to
> restore the capacity to customize it by adding to it, so as to remove
> another toolbar on top.
> 
> (I have already added my voice to those who also want browser.tabs.autoHide
> restored, bug 908720. But the present report is a different issue, with the
> same overall negative effect.)

Hi! Which version of Firefox are you seeing this on? And have you checked whether it's just the address field that you can't move there?

Comment 2

[Cork]

Are you sure you mean bug 908720 and not bug 903720?

Comment 3

[Jonathan Baron]

Answering both questions:

1. Indeed, it is just the address field (which I was calling location window) that I cannot move into the menu bar. So the title of this report is misleading.

2. And indeed I made a typo. I meant bug 908720. Sorry.

The problem remains that I cannot reduce all the junk on top down to one bar. I always considered the ability to do this to be one of the main advantages of Firefox. It is especially important for older people who have vision problems (e.g., for me, but not too serious yet). These people use larger fonts, and with a so-called wide screen there is less and less room for the page you are viewing, if you have more and more bars on top.

Comment 4

[Jonathan Baron]

One more comment. It seems that the problem here is related to the fact that the address field is now embedded into another bar, which cannot be removed, and which also contains a bunch of symbols (like the ones on the Android version). It would be nice to combine this entire bar with the menu bar, and put the search field somewhere else. (I have moved that into the tab bar, which I would like to remove, but cannot.)

The search field has plusses and minuses. One minus is that if you want something other than simple search from Google, such as maps or advanced search, you have to go to Google's page anyway, and it is not obvious how to do that. (I did figure it out.)

Comment 5

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Thank you for clarifying. We're tracking the possibility of moving the address field elsewhere in bug 938985, so I'm going to mark this one as a duplicate of that. You'll automatically be CC'd there so you can follow along as we try to decide what to do. Thank you!