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Order of tab and address bar

  • 12 replies
  • 4 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by Chris Ilias

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Is there a way to manage the order of the "bars", mine recently changed to Menu bar at top, then tabs, then address bar, then bookmarks. I would like to switch up the tabs and address, reverse the order.

Is there a way to manage the order of the "bars", mine recently changed to Menu bar at top, then tabs, then address bar, then bookmarks. I would like to switch up the tabs and address, reverse the order.
Attached screenshots

All Replies (12)

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I can't believe that developers haven't yet made the position of these bars customizable although it has been a problem for many users for such a long time. Most old (and mostly overkill) solutions stop working after a new version. Inserting the following code into userChrome.css (assuming you know how to enable and where to place it) does move the tab bar below the address bar and bookmark bar. But there is a "to do" task if you're using the menu bar (the menu button should suffice really), which is also dragged below with the tab bar.

/* Reorder toolbars */

#navigator-toolbox #nav-bar, findbar {

-moz-box-ordinal-group: 1; }

#navigator-toolbox #PersonalToolbar {

-moz-box-ordinal-group: 2; }

#navigator-toolbox #titlebar {

-moz-box-ordinal-group: 3; }

#navigator-toolbox toolbar {

-moz-box-ordinal-group: 10; }

#navigator-toolbox #TabsToolbar {

-moz-box-ordinal-group: 100; }

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Thank you Sadi, but this is beyond my capabilities of programming :). I was hoping there was a "drag it option" or something in Settings that I couldn't find.

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Brsabs, I'm sure you can do it with the help of step-by-step instructions ;-) This is not programming really, just a simple customization hack to fill the gap left by the developers :) Just follow the steps below (there's a special extra prize when you've completed it :)

1. Enter this in the address bar: about:config 2. Enter this in the box: toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets 3. Click the Toggle button (second from the right end) to change it to true 4. Next, enter this in the address bar: about:profiles 5. Click Open Directory in the Root Directory row to display your Firefox profile directory in a new file manager window 6. Create a directory named chrome (if it doesn’t exist already) 7. Go into this directory and create a plain-text file named userChrome.css (if it doesn’t exist already) 8. Open this file and enter the following text: @namespace xul url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); 9. Finally, enter any customization CSS codes (like the one for re-ordering bars) below this line.

Modified by Sadi

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^^^ Very kind of you to put these instructions up, but no way am I risking dropping a spanner in the engine and blowing it up. Sorry.

My annoyance is that the latest version decided to put my tabs at the top of the screen while I prefer them lower down. It seems strange that different people have got the three rows in different orders from the same software, and yet have no user-friendly way of sorting them.

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Thank you so much for posting these instructions, Sadi! It has been driving my eyes crazy since I updated. I wonder if they ever test these updates on people with visual problems? The whole menu area looks like chaos on top of one bland color background, with no delineation between elements that's easy to pick out at a glance. Things are in an unexpected place and it's been *very* hard to find what I'm looking for. And it is so non-intuitive to separate the actual pages from the tabs that belong to them.

It would really help if I could add some color delineation, like a background color a little darker behind the tabs, so I can see each one as a separate entity easily, instead of one long line of text. Is there some code I could add to this userChrome file to do that? I know a little bit of css. Is there a resource that tells what the elements in the menu are and what they're named?

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Thank you very much Sadi! You're a life-saver.

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You can use the Browser Toolbox to inspect the Firefox user interface and get the selectors.

To enable the Browser Toolbox, see:

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Follow the above instructions by Sadi to access/create your userchrome.css file. Then copy and paste the code under the /* Reorder toolbars */ label provided by Sadi and paste it into your userchrome.css file.

Then edit the code under the /* Reorder toolbars */ label to look like the following :

/* Reorder toolbars */

#navigator-toolbox #PersonalToolbar {

-moz-box-ordinal-group: 1; }

#navigator-toolbox #nav-bar, findbar {

-moz-box-ordinal-group: 2; }

#navigator-toolbox #titlebar {

-moz-box-ordinal-group: 3; }

#navigator-toolbox toolbar {

-moz-box-ordinal-group: 10; }

#navigator-toolbox #TabsToolbar {

-moz-box-ordinal-group: 100; }

This should place Bookmark bar across top of screen, followed by URL and Search bar, Then the menu bar followed by the Tab bar - right above the page viewing area.

It's not perfect but I like it.

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Sadi said

Brsabs, I'm sure you can do it with the help of step-by-step instructions ;-) This is not programming really, just a simple customization hack to fill the gap left by the developers :) Just follow the steps below (there's a special extra prize when you've completed it :) 1. Enter this in the address bar: about:config 2. Enter this in the box: toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets 3. Click the Toggle button (second from the right end) to change it to true 4. Next, enter this in the address bar: about:profiles 5. Click Open Directory in the Root Directory row to display your Firefox profile directory in a new file manager window 6. Create a directory named chrome (if it doesn’t exist already) 7. Go into this directory and create a plain-text file named userChrome.css (if it doesn’t exist already) 8. Open this file and enter the following text: @namespace xul url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); 9. Finally, enter any customization CSS codes (like the one for re-ordering bars) below this line.

But why do we have to do all of this at all? If the programmers would just stop with everything, restore customizing, I wouldn't be so upset.

I am not a fan of the nanny state, especially since they claim FireFox is still "for the people", hypoctrites every one of them...

[Profanity removed by moderator. Please read Mozilla Support rules and guidelines, thanks.]

Modified by Chris Ilias

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"Productivity-inspired new tab design: Tabs. We use them every day. They signal where you are, but we need them to do more work. Everything from conveying information about what video is playing to where your next Zoom meeting is. It’s no surprise that more than 50% of people have 4 tabs or more open. We redesigned these tabs so that they floated neatly, and we added the visual indicators, like blocking autoplay videos until you’re ready to visit that tab. We detached the tab from the browser to invite you to move, rearrange and pull out tabs into a new window to suit your flow, and organize them so they’re easier for you to find."

How ironic, they claimed that as they looked at the data, there were 17 BILLION clicks on the tab bar - now the woke programmers took that to mean they had to make the tab bar go away! Or at least, I cannot find it... unless I run FireFox in Troubleshoot mode, and how's that supposed to be better. Heck, even the menu bar, which I use ALOT, is now hidden and can only be accessed by turning it on EVERY time I start FireFox.

And then there's the order of menu bars, who wants their tabs on top of everything else - that means I have to look up and up and up to see where I'm going. Selena even admits that most users have 4 or more tabs, as a researcher, I typically have dozens. All this talk of a better UI, ! It now takes me hours to do what I did in minutes.

[Profanity removed by moderator. Please read Mozilla Support rules and guidelines, thanks.]

Modified by Chris Ilias

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So, as I searched for help to overcome this latest assault on us users (I've been loyal since the first release), I ran across a fork called WaterFox.

It isn't the FireFox of early times, but it's a blessing. Within about 20 minutes, I had WaterFox installed, my most important add-ons installed, and was almost fully back in business.

About the only glaring flaw that I found, is there isn't a separator for the menu bars. That's kind of strange.

But most importantly, it's customizable in terms of actual 'Options" that allow you to put the menu bars where YOU want them. I suspect there's more customizable features under the hood, but at least my blood pressure is way down.

FireFox, seriously, if you want to emulate some "woke" nanny state browser instead of honoring your LOYAL user base, then don't listen to us. I'll certainly check in periodically to see if you've come to your senses, but until then, I'm not going down with the ship.

Best of luck.

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Hi everyone, It doesn't look like the person who posted the original question is going to respond, and others seem to be using this thread for there own issues, so I'm going to lock this thread.

For better help, it would be best to use https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new where volunteers can get more details about your setup.