Please return old search bar

Firefox Development
#8

And don’t forget that every search engine has its own list of suggestions. If I choose IMDb for example and then need to look for something on Wikipedia, the search bar will offer me titles that are on IMDb, but I can’t know all the page names on Wikipedia. When I start typing, the search bar would offer me options to choose. After clicking on one, it’d sent me directly to the page. If I choose something I only think could be it, because I have IMDb’s list of suggestions, not from Wiki, it sends me to a page with all the options that more or less match. Another complication.

The main reason to use Mozilla Firefox for me was that it aloud me to customize the browser more than any rival brand. But with every new version, they supress it and change the browser to be more and more like all the others. Why use it then since no business sells computers with Mozilla already installed, but some else? If this continues and goes even further…

#9

I switched to an alternate browser just because of that… All the rest is fine but this new and unavoidable behaviour is a deal-breaker.

#10

You can always get the old-style searchbar back by performing the following steps:

  1. Go to the main menu (the right-most ‘Hamburger’ button in the toolbar),
  2. Click and select the ‘Customize…’ option,
  3. Drag the ‘Search’ item onto the toolbar and drop it there,
  4. Click and select the ‘Done’ button to exit the ‘Customize’ mode.

Now you’ve got the old search bar back in the same configuration as pre-Quantum.

1 Like
#11

Mike, problem is not with placing search bar to the toolbar but with drop-down of search engines and behavior of search! If it be so simple to bring back the old behavior we would not discuss this topic for several months.

#12

My apologies for simplifying the issue at hand… the topic title is a bit misleading then.

I doubt that switching to another browser will solve this specific issue, btw.

So having a separate notion between the ‘current engine’ and the ‘default engine’, or in other words: separating setting a search engine in the searchbar from setting it as the global default, so that searches from the awesomebar, about:home & about:newtab are not affected, is not coming back, I’m afraid. At least, not in the way it was.
We (Mozilla Firefox engineers and managers) are always listening and filtering for popular requests from our community. Nowadays a lot of these requests end up as new WebExtension APIs, which is a great way to extend the browser and allow addon authors to create workflows of their own.
There’s already a browser.search API, which is under active development at the moment.
Please feel free to file requests in Bugzilla, which is where we track all our work.

#13

Hi All, yes, the workflow of the classic search bar changed. Actually, it changed in Firefox 34, but many of you were rolling that back through one means or another until Firefox 57 made that impossible.*

I don’t expect this post to make any new fans, but I wanted to point out that you can get suggestions from your intended new search engine with an extra click:

Set new default search engine on OLD BAR:

  • drop the list
  • click the icon

Set new default search engine on NEW BAR:

  • drop the list
  • right-click the icon
  • click “Set As Default Search Engine”

To address issues with lack of text labels for the icons, you can use custom style rules. This video illustrates:

My page to generate rules for a userChrome.css file:

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/gm/search-bar-names.html

* By “impossible” I mean without injecting old bar code into Firefox using an XBL binding or Autoconfig. E.g., https://github.com/Aris-t2/ClassicThemeRestorer/

#14

Is there a more informative link for the work-in-progress?

#15

Thanks for your suggestion, but the main problem is not what can I achieve by using extra right-click, but what is happening when I use left-click like I used to do for almost 10 years. It suddenly changes the page I’m looking at - unacceptable.

The new behavior is the only reason I’m still using FF 56. It’s ridiculous and I cannot imagine what is the reason for this change. If I want to search for something, the first decision I’m making is WHERE I will do it, and then WHAT will be the exact phrase. Like in real life: FIRST you choose the proper dictionary, and THEN you are looking for the desired word.
Quantum is turning this upside down :frowning:

#16

Sorry for offtopic but is seems to me that developers just do not care. Some software architect or even non-technical guy decided that new approach is “modern”, “looks like apple/google/microsoft” and thus is “better” and they introduced the change that broken user experience of millions. Like in other software products, doesn’t matter proprietary or open-source.

#17

This change was introduced in Firefox 34 in October 2015. There was an internal preference to revert it in Firefox 34-42. Then there were add-ons for Firefox 43-56. We are very, very far down the road now, and I am not aware of any interest in disturbing the behaviors established by millions of other users during the past three years.

#18

That’s true. It’s also true, that before Quantum we had a choice, now it’s gone.

Does anyone analyzed statistics on how many people were using browser.search.showOneOffButtons?
Does anyone analyzed statistics on how many people were using Classic Theme Restorer to get “old style” search bar?
I’m afraid, that someone decided that mobile users with touch screens are now more important, so we break the experience for many people - just because we can. And finally: does anyone have statistics on how many people are really using the search bar in the new form? How many people treat it as a really useful tool and how many just ignore its existence since it started to be useless…

#19

+1

Absolutely agree with previous author. And IMHO nowadays the only reason to use search bar is for users who explicitly disabled search from address bar (by privacy reasons). But I suspect there are no much such users, most just use address bar for search purposes and get rid of search bar.

#20

The choice was to use an extension that could inject completely new code into Firefox’s user interface. And extensions can no longer do that.

There are still hacks if you search for them. But there is no guarantee they will continue to work so I don’t promote them.

The search bar is not shown in new installs starting in Firefox 57; it has to be enabled on the Options/Preferences page or added using Customize. I hope it remains available because it’s convenient for old timers, but further development seems doubtful. The focus is on the address bar these days.

#21

Hi,

yeah - once again I am looking for a solution to get the old well working search solution for firefox that everybody I know liked. Now I read that it was pure friendliness that we users were allowed to still use this way we were used and liked just the way it was.

Instead I would really like to see a solution to get back what simply worked.

remember: if it ain’t broke - don’t fix it.

Wouldn’t it be a good idea to interpret the existence of addons like that? I am pretty sure everyone who did not use the addon just did not know of its existence or was not able to install it

Finally: how to get back the old search now?

regards

1 Like
#22

I only registered here to say to you:
Please bring the working Searchbar back!
The actual one is simply BS, and I’m starting to hate the new firefox version so incredible much.
I’m really thinking about to change the browser, because working with this is no fun.

#23

I am another user who found Old Search in a separate searchbar a lot more practical. I used it up until FF63 with CustomCSSforFx. Combining jscher2000’s suggestions and the pre-built CSS options in CustomCSSforFx, I could get a reasonably good simulation of Old Search.

But it’s not perfect and I still don’t like it. At least the default search engine icon display should be re-implemented (although I won’t hold my breath expecting it).

I also take issue with the attitude of developers, even helpful ones in this thread who are giving useful advice. Even if there are tweaks to restore old functionality, users shouldn’t be forced to do so. For relatively tech-savvy people like me, the issue is just the time I have to waste to find & correctly implement those tweaks. But for a lot of other users, especially older people, even just to find new options/tweaks and/or re-learning everything every two years is just too difficult. Developers don’t seem to realise that not only aren’t most users geeks, even most users who customize software aren’t geeks.

With Firefox, for me, the perverse situation is that I can’t switch to other browsers, because the changes in FF are aping those other browsers. SO I have to use whatever customisation is still available to get back old features like coloured menu icons.

1 Like
#24

Firefox developers should stop overestimating the suppossed need or desirability of the one-time search (the ability of sending your search to a different site without making that site your default search engine) because we normally do more than 2 consecutive searches from a site when using the one-time search feature (usually 3 or more), and doing searches this way or changing the default search engine with the new-style search bar (in order to get autocompletion of search suggestions from the site you need them) is actually tedious compared to the way of changing the default engine with the previous interface (up to Firefox 34), so Firefox should restore both the previous/“classic” style search bar (I guess almost nobody will miss the one-time search feature if it disappears) and the internal preference to choose between both styles for the search bar, and keep them forever for the sake of both desired functionality and customization.

2 Likes
#25

Just happened to come across this thread.

Idk. if this will work for everybody here, but I make use of the keywords which can be assigned to each search engine in preferences. Let’s say ‘g’ is assigned to google. If you want to search from address bar and your default search engine is not google, all you have to do is type ‘g’ Space-key and then your search term. If enabled, you will also get search suggestions. The same goes for all the engines I tried it with.

That is actually a pretty neat feature which I have come to like. And possibly could make up for the missing search bar - for some people - I think.

But in general (unfortunately) I agree with most of you previous posters. Idk. who makes the decisions or how they are made at mozilla (therefore I won’t blame anybody) but I also had some very hard times adjusting to new implementations. (I still mourn the old address-bar dropdown which showed the blue Urls just below the page title and not after).

Don’t want to change the subject though…

#27

It is a shame what happened to Mozilla Firefox.
What’s the point in having for eg. separated search bar, if it uses same search engine as the address bar and you cannot set different for both!

What kind of m***n programmed it like that?

#28

100% agreed that the old search bar layout was massively, massively superior.

Having a simple list of search engines with their corresponding labels beside them was infinitely clearer than relying on a grid of tiny icons without any text.

@jscher2000

I am not aware of any interest in disturbing the behaviors established by millions of other users during the past three years.

That’s exactly what Mozilla developers do, though. They implement features, leave them for years, then suddenly - and without warning - totally obliterate them or change them completely.

1 Like