No menus, buttons, address bar after installing Firefox4=unusable browser
After upgrading to Firefox 4, my previously open tabs open, my bookmark tab is displayed (in the wrong order: first tabs then bookmarks is not the work sequence). But I don't have any buttons, menu bar, address bar, or search bar. There is a Firefox single "Menu" that drops down 2 columns of 11 and 6 options, respectively (what kind of a hideous menu is that on a 1920*1200 screen?). No View menu, which is what I need to fix the mess created by the installer. BTW: Even though the look of FF4 is crisper than FF3, whoever was to design the user interface paradigm didn't know what they were doing. This UI is not user workflow oriented, see my comment above about bookmark and tab sequence. Why is the currently open tab visually associated with all bookmarks in the bookmarks toolbar? Etc, etc.... Whatever, your choice, when I start hating it enough I'll switch to Chrome. Until then, please help me get menus back.
Chosen solution
Firefox 4.0 has been, how shall I put it?, 'redesigned'.
But you can get the old style back by doing the following.
- Right click a blank part of the tab bar and click "Tabs on top" to remove the checkmark. Tabs will subsequently reappear below the search bar.
- Repeat the same steps, but click the top one called "Menu bar". This will reinstate the text links at the top.
- Repeat again and click "Navigation Bar" to reinstate the location bar.
- To rearrange the layout, repeat the same steps again and choose "Customize". A panel will open and while that remains onscreen, you can move elements like toolbars, buttons etc around and place them anywhere you wish. You can also drag anything you don't like into that panel and add anything you want by dragging it out of there.
- To replace the status bar at the foot of the page, install this add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/status-4-evar/
All Replies (7)
Chosen Solution
Firefox 4.0 has been, how shall I put it?, 'redesigned'.
But you can get the old style back by doing the following.
- Right click a blank part of the tab bar and click "Tabs on top" to remove the checkmark. Tabs will subsequently reappear below the search bar.
- Repeat the same steps, but click the top one called "Menu bar". This will reinstate the text links at the top.
- Repeat again and click "Navigation Bar" to reinstate the location bar.
- To rearrange the layout, repeat the same steps again and choose "Customize". A panel will open and while that remains onscreen, you can move elements like toolbars, buttons etc around and place them anywhere you wish. You can also drag anything you don't like into that panel and add anything you want by dragging it out of there.
- To replace the status bar at the foot of the page, install this add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/status-4-evar/
Thank you very much Xircal!
I wish the design team would solicit more input before "redesigning" things. Many great products fail in the market in the long run because the existing users cannot continue to use the new version the way they used the older.
And apparently, QC was not up to par or the reinstall wouldn't have turned off my bars...
Thanks again!
You're welcome.
Why should we have to go through all this. Why don't you inform us before we download a new firefox version that the entire layout will be different, that we will not be able to have familiar add ons? You should inform us ahead of time. I downloaded firefox4 to find after the fact that all my add ons were not compatible. I have just spent over one hour uninstalling and attempting to reinstall firefox 3.6.17 which also was a problem and created all sorts of unstability on my computer. Fortunately, my original firefox setup 3.6.3 was still in my download file and I was able to reinstall that copy. It cost me over one hour of my time to fix the mess that firefox4 caused me!! Never again!!
@ emlynn, there are articles available on the Mozilla site which discuss the changes made to later versions.
However, on this particular occasion, I have to agree with you. I really don't understand why the new layout doesn't include a "File" menu. Mental aberration on the part of the developers methinks.
It's certainly not logical that a user has to go through this rigmarole to access the menu which disables "Work Offline".
But, in your own particular case, you need to update to v3.6.17 by clicking Help, then Check For Updates a.s.a.p.
The reason for this is because there was a security breach at Comodo which is an SSL certificate provider recently whereby a number of fraudulent certificates were inadvertently issued. These allow a hacker to impersonate any site including online banking and the Firefox version you're running at the moment will not warn you that the site is a fake. The fraudulent certificates were blacklisted in v3.6.17 and beyond.
For more info on the subject, see http://blogs.comodo.com/it-security/data-security/the-recent-ra-compromise/
I have no Home button! I want to change the order of toolbars, too and cannot. I also see the title of the current page at the top of my screen and I can also see part of my desktop background photo. When I maximize the screen I lose the toolbars. View/Toolbars/Customize does not solve any of these problems--- I know that is for adding/deleting icons but I don't need to do that. Any ideas? This is driving me nuts. Can I uninstall the latest version of Firefox and go back to another? How would I do that? Thanks.
@ ThisIsGoofy, if you want to reinstate the toolbars permanently in full screen mode, do the following.
- In the location bar at the top, type about:config and hit Enter.
- In the filter at the top, copy/paste the following: browser.fullscreen.autohide
- Double click it to chance it from True to False.
Close the tab and then hit F11 to enable full screen mode. You should now be able to see the toolbars / location bar etc.
As regards the Home button, you should be able to see that on the far right next to the Search field.