Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

in firefox 42 how do i get the old options box back and NOT a browser page with the commands?

  • 7 cavab
  • 6 have this problem
  • 16 views
  • Last reply by phasetex

more options

When I open the Preferences, they now show up in a new page, rather than in a dialog box. I tried setting preferences incontent to false, but it has no effect. How do I get this back the way it was? (To bring up the preferences in something other than a dialogu box is a violation of the Macintosh user interface guidelines, as this is supposed to work consistently across all Mac applications.

When I open the Preferences, they now show up in a new page, rather than in a dialog box. I tried setting preferences incontent to false, but it has no effect. How do I get this back the way it was? (To bring up the preferences in something other than a dialogu box is a violation of the Macintosh user interface guidelines, as this is supposed to work consistently across all Mac applications.

All Replies (7)

more options

That dialog no longer exists in Firefox. Perhaps an add-on will revive it.

more options

The browser.preferences.inContent is no longer supported in Firefox 42 and later, so it is not possible to open a standalone window. Bug 1140495 - Remove support for windowed preferences

You can possibly create a button on the Bookmarks Toolbar to the about:preferences page and hold the Shift key and left-click to open the page in a new window.

You can look at the Classic Theme Restorer extension.

  • General UI (1): Open options page (about:preferences) in a window
more options

Why in the world was this done? Why remove functionality? This is maddening. I keep the cookies window open all the time, and it's not possible. Plus, every time I open the preferences, it defaults to General, and doesn't remember that I had Privacy open the last time. How can we get them to restore this functionality?

more options

That was done because the code for the previously used standalone window hadn't been updated and was out of sync with the about:preferences, so users that used the standalone window wouldn't see the settings that were added recently.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1071558#answer-803518

Quote from bug report

[Feature/regressing bug #]: removing windowed preferences, new additions were made to in-content prefs for 42 that weren't made to the windowed preferences. it would be good to make sure that all users see the new preferences, so this removes support for the deprecated windowed preferences in 42.
[User impact if declined]: some users who opted-out of the in-content preferences will not see the new features that are targeted for 42.

Please do not comment in bug reports
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html

more options

But this is a violation of the Macintosh user interface guidelines. Mac users expect every Mac application to open its preferences in a Preferences dialog box, and also expect that the last Preferences tab accessed in that window to appear the next time they open the Preferences. Firefox needs to be brought back into alignment with those guidelines, and restore the behavior the Mac users expect in all Mac applications.

more options

You may report your complaints here: https://input.mozilla.org/en-US/feedback

more options

I started this original thread back in Firefox 38 and it worked until Firefox 43. The lack of a stand alone box for the OPTIONS is not acceptable. I want it restored. It is difficult to read a page not a box, it is even more difficult to find what I was looking for since some of the switch tabs do not exist on webpages versus the old "dialog box" for OPTIONS. How does it get restored and if this was done away with, why is Firefox becoming like Microsoft and giving users what they DON'T WANT??? Signed Phasetex