9 ms·

What's this about the status bar / add-on bar gone? The main reason why I use Status-4-Evar is because when I hover over a link I don't want that link to pop-o

by exodust 13y ago

What's this about the status bar / add-on bar gone? The main reason why I use Status-4-Evar is because when I hover over a link I don't want that link to pop-over the page content, which is what Chrome did first, then Firefox copied like sheep. It's distracting, like a tiny little pop-over in the corner of your eye. I like having URLs show in a status bar separate to the main web window. It's out of the way, and I just like having my web browser framed by an interface. Is that so wrong? What's so bad about a status bar? Why is there this idea that everyone wants the full screen web? First Mozilla forces their CEO to resign, now they're being the soup nazi over the status bar which has been with browsers since day one of web browsers. You call that progress? I call it chopping down an old tree that nobody wanted chopped down.

TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
They're cutting down on unnecessary chrome. I can't say I have a problem with it; less chrome means more room for page content. A bit like why Apple added fullscreen apps.
- efdee 13y ago
  You kind of make it sound as if Apple invented maximized windows... :-)
  - hoers 13y ago
    Fullscreen, not maximized But yeah, apple is far away from having invented it
  - pilsetnieks 13y ago
    A maximized window still shows all of the chrome, as well as system menus. Full-screen apps (not that Apple invented them) hide the window chrome as well as the various system menus.
  - epochwolf 13y ago
    OS X's full screen apps aren't maximzed windows. If I put Sublime into full screen mode, there's no window, no menu bar. It's a text editor taking up the entire screen. If I were to maximize Sublime on Windows, Linux, or OS X (green button), you still have the chrome from the windowing system and the OS's menu bars. Also, the parent comment makes no claim Apple invented anything, he/she is just drawing a comparison people would be familiar with. Frankly, it's more than a little annoying to me that you have to distract from the topic to make completely non-constructive dig at a company you seem to dislike and completely miss the point of the comparison in doing so.
    - danford 13y ago
      >If I were to maximize Sublime on [...] Linux. I don't use sublime, but on Linux (Ubuntu GNOME) when you full screen an app the window decorations are hidden and so are the status/window menus. Edit: before you downvote, please explain why??
      - epochwolf 13y ago
        You're being downvoted because you are incorrect. Ubuntu GNOME does not have an equivalent of OS X full screen build in to the windowing system. It has a maximize button that doesn't remove the chrome, it just makes the window take up the most of the screen. In OS X, there is no window. The app is completely edge to edge similar like an iOS app except without the status bar. Edit: Ubuntu "Fullscreen": http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EnulBlkjTEM/Tzo7Fo3l3uI/AAAAAAAAHwI/N8Fxykdp3uw/s1600/locally-integrated-menu-maxmized.png http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EnulBlkjTEM/Tzo7Fo3l3uI/AAAAAAAAHw... OS X Fullscreen: http://www3.pcmag.com/media/images/237835-iphoto-11-albums-in-full-screen.jpg http://www3.pcmag.com/media/images/237835-iphoto-11-albums-i...
        danford 13y ago
        But that's not full screen though. That's maximize, you are incorrect. http://i.imgur.com/lO0g7oS.gif http://i.imgur.com/lO0g7oS.gif
  - 14113 13y ago
    Except fullscreen apps are actually a bit more than maximised windows: They remove both the top of the title bar and other operating system bars, leaving just the control interfaces, and content. For example, chrome would just have the tabs, address bar, and content, without operating system bars, and without the program titlebar.
- barrkel 13y ago
  I run Firefox with a lot of plugins. I rely on the status bar (add-on bar) to keep many of the plugin notification / configuration buttons out of my toolbar. From my perspective, Firefox is working hard to drive me away, by removing its distinguishing features that make it different from Chrome.
  - DSMan195276 13y ago
    You should keep in mind that the use-case for Firefox is that the default install focuses on the general user, and add-ons are intended for people looking for something extra/different. You can get the add-on bar back easy by grabbing the 'classic theme restorer' add-on. It allows enabling-disabling a variety of features. I can't say I agree with all of their choices, but I'm running 29 right now and I don't feel like any functionality or customizability is lost from the last version. If you're not looking for the defaults you can change pretty much everything you want with a few add-ons and about 10 minutes or so of configuration.
  - sp332 13y ago
    Can you stick them all in the menu at the end of the toolbar? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-controls-buttons-and-toolbars https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-contr...
    - barrkel 13y ago
      No, because I need them to be visible to show their status.
  - Livven 13y ago
    That's why the new hamburger menu is so awesome. You can put all the addon buttons that you don't want taking up space on the main toolbar in there.
    - barrkel 13y ago
      That would be great if they didn't also display status.
sh1989 13y ago
The status bar temporarily appears when hovering over a URL, so at least that's still there.
nfoz 13y ago
They started following the Chrome screwed-up-statusbar a long time ago. It's like noone in the webdev space knows the basic usability adage, "Don't use popups!". The Chrome-style hover-status thing is a popup. Statusbars are correct.
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  Disagree. The statusbar is barely useful for me - all I use it for is to peek at where links will take me; it's good to save that real estate for content. Things that default to the statusbar (some app buttons) I put up top in the addressbar, with a wide screen there's plenty of room for a few buttons there.
  - noisy_boy 13y ago
    The status bar is excellent for what the name indicates i.e. status. FoxyClocks in a great example - allows me to check the time in different countries at a glance, is too wide to fit on a top-side toolbar and basically something that is always present but not obtrusive.
  - nfoz 13y ago
    I can't accept a message popping up over top of existing content, distracting the user to a different part of the screen, based on mouse-hover of all things (so it's sure to jump out all the time). They mitigate this a bit by adding time-delays but that's even worse. The status bar IMO should have more things e.g. download status, but the browsers chose not go to that direction. OK, then remove the statusbar and put the link-direction in the location bar instead during the hover.
    - Livven 13y ago
      Agree, I don't understand how every major browser came to adopt that popup thing instead of just putting the link preview into the address bar. I use this addon which does exactly that https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/link-location-bar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/link-location...
sergiunegara 13y ago
I so much agree with you. O hate the interface changes.
amarraja 13y ago
It's the first thing I noticed changed, and the first thing I tried (and failed) to re-enable. I am part of the "don't like change" crowd, but normally just get used to it can carry on. This is the first functional change which actually made me a little angry! EDIT: Found this to restore just the addon bar: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/the-addon-bar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/the-addon-bar... Nerdrage subsiding
- a3n 13y ago
  The one that got me was when they took away 'n' to get to the next search result. Not anything to rage quit over, but it pissed me off. I now use VimFX for a few vim navigation keys, and vim-like search.
  - stefantalpalaru 13y ago
    They replaced it with F3 for some reason.
    - mrec 13y ago
      Maybe because it's the Windows standard, and they think there are more Windows users than vim users?
      - a3n 13y ago
        It wasn't the n for vim search I was missing, it was the next function with a keypress, which happened to have been done with n in FF's searchbox, and coincidentally n in vim. I didn't know that they replaced it with F3.
        core1024 13y ago
        C-G is still working so I'm fine with it :)
- ubercow13 13y ago
abus 13y ago
I agree with you. There is an addon to correct it though: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...
- maxerickson 13y ago
  If it is official, they should verify the author. (Or admit that the notification that the author is not verified is meaningless) edit: Also, on my install, the version there makes Firefox 29 lock up when I click on options. But my profile is pretty ancient.
  - abus 13y ago
    My mistake, sorry, I thought it was official because it's linked to on the Mozilla support page and I thought the developer "Aris" related to "Australis".
    - agapos 13y ago
      The similarity in names is only a coincidence.
zethraeus 13y ago
I love it. The status bar struck me as weird cruft that was irrelevant the vast majority of the time. I've been using it in aurora and beta for a while now and I quite like the screen real estate.
- nandhp 13y ago
  It's not a new feature, either. The statusbar has been a "only when hovering on a link" for many releases. Yet another feature copied from Opera....
  - actionscripted 13y ago
    At this point some of the most beloved browser features in nearly every browser came from Opera.
- zipperhead 13y ago
  Okay... but you could always turn if off. I personally like having my 'status' things down there, things like gmail, lastpass, etc. I prefer to have the status items separated from the control-type items on top. I don't see why they had to nuke it.
CmdrKrool 13y ago
The Customize mode seems fairly flexible, for shuffling things between the three fixed-position bars, ie. the menu, navigation and bookmarks bars (probably the tab bar as well though I don't use tabs myself). I wonder why you can't just add new blank bars, at either the top or bottom, to fill up to your heart's content with that same Customize mode. That would undo most of the need for things like Status-4-Evar. This hasn't changed in version 29, by the way. 'Customize' in version 28 also let you juggle controls around any of the menu, navigation, bookmarks or add-on bars pretty generically. In fact, for all the fanfare about how revolutionary a change this new UI is, the only real functional difference in it I can see between 28 and 29 is the removal of the add-on bar, ie. the only one of the bars whose fixed position happened to be at the bottom, rather than the top. (Of course I don't really believe that this release is specifically intended to troll people who like having some controls at the bottom of their screen, but I must admit that if you did want to do that, then this would be a good way to do it. I'm sticking with 28 until Status-4-Evar catches up. Also thanks for the suggestion of the "Addon Bar" extension elsewhere in the thread, seen and noted.)
- gagege 13y ago
  I'm very curious about your statement that you don't use tabs. Why not? Do you really only ever have one page open at once?
  - CmdrKrool 13y ago
    I open everything in a new window, and juggle windows at the desktop level with the help of a nifty Alt+Tab enhancer. I know there's a use case for using seperate windows to group tabs by topic, but I don't like having that organization forced on me. Also, I don't use a tiling window manager, but they tend to have their own ways of dealing with large numbers of windows, I hear.
- insertnickname 13y ago
  Actually, they also removed the ability to disable the navigation bar, which is very annoying for me because I use Vimperator. It can be removed by installing an extension, but I don't understand why they would remove this functionality.
aluhut 13y ago
I don't get it either. "Status 4 ever" didn't help either. But I found a way: Get this addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/ https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/classicthemerest... Activate the "Bottombar Toolbar" by right clicking somewhere on the top space where the bars are. Now you have a small bar down there. Open the new funky customization menue and drag the "Statustext"-Element down there. The only problem is that you'll find your Start-Button above the text... Somehow I find myself installing even more Add-Ons with every major UI "improvisation" to keep a useful UI. I wish it would be the other way around where you got standard and customized from there.
- barrkel 13y ago
  This did not work for me. In fact classic theme restorer broke FF's Customize... menu feature, as well as the hamburger menu at the end of the toolbar - it is now completely inoperable, even after removing it.
  - aluhut 13y ago
    Ok this is weird. I just repeated the procedure on my office PC and it worked. Do you have an theme active probably?
    - barrkel 13y ago
      As far as I'm aware, I did not have a theme active. I spent several hours debugging this. Chiefly the culprit turned out to be "Default Full Zoom Level" extension. However, during the debugging process, I did a binary search through prefs.js looking for the problem. If I removed this line: user_pref("browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone", "29.0"); ... the browser worked properly again. Very peculiar. Of course, this was written into the prefs.js again upon exit, so when restarted the browser was broken again. Classic Theme Restorer probably wasn't the problem. Probably the problem only showed up because that was the first restart post-upgrade (to enable the extension).
Livven 13y ago
You can put the link preview directly into the address bar with this addon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/link-location-bar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/link-location... Status-4-Evar can actually do the same but it's a bit of a hassle to configure if you don't need its other features.

by exodust 13y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago

They're cutting down on unnecessary chrome. I can't say I have a problem with it; less chrome means more room for page content. A bit like why Apple added fullscreen apps.

efdee 13y ago
You kind of make it sound as if Apple invented maximized windows... :-)
- hoers 13y ago
  Fullscreen, not maximized But yeah, apple is far away from having invented it
- pilsetnieks 13y ago
  A maximized window still shows all of the chrome, as well as system menus. Full-screen apps (not that Apple invented them) hide the window chrome as well as the various system menus.
- epochwolf 13y ago
  OS X's full screen apps aren't maximzed windows. If I put Sublime into full screen mode, there's no window, no menu bar. It's a text editor taking up the entire screen. If I were to maximize Sublime on Windows, Linux, or OS X (green button), you still have the chrome from the windowing system and the OS's menu bars. Also, the parent comment makes no claim Apple invented anything, he/she is just drawing a comparison people would be familiar with. Frankly, it's more than a little annoying to me that you have to distract from the topic to make completely non-constructive dig at a company you seem to dislike and completely miss the point of the comparison in doing so.
  - danford 13y ago
    >If I were to maximize Sublime on [...] Linux. I don't use sublime, but on Linux (Ubuntu GNOME) when you full screen an app the window decorations are hidden and so are the status/window menus. Edit: before you downvote, please explain why??
    - epochwolf 13y ago
      You're being downvoted because you are incorrect. Ubuntu GNOME does not have an equivalent of OS X full screen build in to the windowing system. It has a maximize button that doesn't remove the chrome, it just makes the window take up the most of the screen. In OS X, there is no window. The app is completely edge to edge similar like an iOS app except without the status bar. Edit: Ubuntu "Fullscreen": http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EnulBlkjTEM/Tzo7Fo3l3uI/AAAAAAAAHwI/N8Fxykdp3uw/s1600/locally-integrated-menu-maxmized.png http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EnulBlkjTEM/Tzo7Fo3l3uI/AAAAAAAAHw... OS X Fullscreen: http://www3.pcmag.com/media/images/237835-iphoto-11-albums-in-full-screen.jpg http://www3.pcmag.com/media/images/237835-iphoto-11-albums-i...
      - danford 13y ago
        But that's not full screen though. That's maximize, you are incorrect. http://i.imgur.com/lO0g7oS.gif http://i.imgur.com/lO0g7oS.gif
- 14113 13y ago
  Except fullscreen apps are actually a bit more than maximised windows: They remove both the top of the title bar and other operating system bars, leaving just the control interfaces, and content. For example, chrome would just have the tabs, address bar, and content, without operating system bars, and without the program titlebar.
barrkel 13y ago
I run Firefox with a lot of plugins. I rely on the status bar (add-on bar) to keep many of the plugin notification / configuration buttons out of my toolbar. From my perspective, Firefox is working hard to drive me away, by removing its distinguishing features that make it different from Chrome.
- DSMan195276 13y ago
  You should keep in mind that the use-case for Firefox is that the default install focuses on the general user, and add-ons are intended for people looking for something extra/different. You can get the add-on bar back easy by grabbing the 'classic theme restorer' add-on. It allows enabling-disabling a variety of features. I can't say I agree with all of their choices, but I'm running 29 right now and I don't feel like any functionality or customizability is lost from the last version. If you're not looking for the defaults you can change pretty much everything you want with a few add-ons and about 10 minutes or so of configuration.
- sp332 13y ago
  Can you stick them all in the menu at the end of the toolbar? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-controls-buttons-and-toolbars https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-contr...
  - barrkel 13y ago
    No, because I need them to be visible to show their status.
- Livven 13y ago
  That's why the new hamburger menu is so awesome. You can put all the addon buttons that you don't want taking up space on the main toolbar in there.
  - barrkel 13y ago
    That would be great if they didn't also display status.

sh1989 13y ago

The status bar temporarily appears when hovering over a URL, so at least that's still there.

nfoz 13y ago

They started following the Chrome screwed-up-statusbar a long time ago. It's like noone in the webdev space knows the basic usability adage, "Don't use popups!". The Chrome-style hover-status thing is a popup. Statusbars are correct.

pbhjpbhj 13y ago
Disagree. The statusbar is barely useful for me - all I use it for is to peek at where links will take me; it's good to save that real estate for content. Things that default to the statusbar (some app buttons) I put up top in the addressbar, with a wide screen there's plenty of room for a few buttons there.
- noisy_boy 13y ago
  The status bar is excellent for what the name indicates i.e. status. FoxyClocks in a great example - allows me to check the time in different countries at a glance, is too wide to fit on a top-side toolbar and basically something that is always present but not obtrusive.
- nfoz 13y ago
  I can't accept a message popping up over top of existing content, distracting the user to a different part of the screen, based on mouse-hover of all things (so it's sure to jump out all the time). They mitigate this a bit by adding time-delays but that's even worse. The status bar IMO should have more things e.g. download status, but the browsers chose not go to that direction. OK, then remove the statusbar and put the link-direction in the location bar instead during the hover.
  - Livven 13y ago
    Agree, I don't understand how every major browser came to adopt that popup thing instead of just putting the link preview into the address bar. I use this addon which does exactly that https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/link-location-bar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/link-location...

sergiunegara 13y ago

I so much agree with you. O hate the interface changes.

amarraja 13y ago

It's the first thing I noticed changed, and the first thing I tried (and failed) to re-enable. I am part of the "don't like change" crowd, but normally just get used to it can carry on. This is the first functional change which actually made me a little angry! EDIT: Found this to restore just the addon bar: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/the-addon-bar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/the-addon-bar... Nerdrage subsiding

a3n 13y ago
The one that got me was when they took away 'n' to get to the next search result. Not anything to rage quit over, but it pissed me off. I now use VimFX for a few vim navigation keys, and vim-like search.
- stefantalpalaru 13y ago
  They replaced it with F3 for some reason.
  - mrec 13y ago
    Maybe because it's the Windows standard, and they think there are more Windows users than vim users?
    - a3n 13y ago
      It wasn't the n for vim search I was missing, it was the next function with a keypress, which happened to have been done with n in FF's searchbox, and coincidentally n in vim. I didn't know that they replaced it with F3.
      - core1024 13y ago
        C-G is still working so I'm fine with it :)
ubercow13 13y ago

abus 13y ago

I agree with you. There is an addon to correct it though: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...

maxerickson 13y ago
If it is official, they should verify the author. (Or admit that the notification that the author is not verified is meaningless) edit: Also, on my install, the version there makes Firefox 29 lock up when I click on options. But my profile is pretty ancient.
- abus 13y ago
  My mistake, sorry, I thought it was official because it's linked to on the Mozilla support page and I thought the developer "Aris" related to "Australis".
  - agapos 13y ago
    The similarity in names is only a coincidence.

zethraeus 13y ago

I love it. The status bar struck me as weird cruft that was irrelevant the vast majority of the time. I've been using it in aurora and beta for a while now and I quite like the screen real estate.

nandhp 13y ago
It's not a new feature, either. The statusbar has been a "only when hovering on a link" for many releases. Yet another feature copied from Opera....
- actionscripted 13y ago
  At this point some of the most beloved browser features in nearly every browser came from Opera.
zipperhead 13y ago
Okay... but you could always turn if off. I personally like having my 'status' things down there, things like gmail, lastpass, etc. I prefer to have the status items separated from the control-type items on top. I don't see why they had to nuke it.

CmdrKrool 13y ago

The Customize mode seems fairly flexible, for shuffling things between the three fixed-position bars, ie. the menu, navigation and bookmarks bars (probably the tab bar as well though I don't use tabs myself). I wonder why you can't just add new blank bars, at either the top or bottom, to fill up to your heart's content with that same Customize mode. That would undo most of the need for things like Status-4-Evar. This hasn't changed in version 29, by the way. 'Customize' in version 28 also let you juggle controls around any of the menu, navigation, bookmarks or add-on bars pretty generically. In fact, for all the fanfare about how revolutionary a change this new UI is, the only real functional difference in it I can see between 28 and 29 is the removal of the add-on bar, ie. the only one of the bars whose fixed position happened to be at the bottom, rather than the top. (Of course I don't really believe that this release is specifically intended to troll people who like having some controls at the bottom of their screen, but I must admit that if you did want to do that, then this would be a good way to do it. I'm sticking with 28 until Status-4-Evar catches up. Also thanks for the suggestion of the "Addon Bar" extension elsewhere in the thread, seen and noted.)

gagege 13y ago
I'm very curious about your statement that you don't use tabs. Why not? Do you really only ever have one page open at once?
- CmdrKrool 13y ago
  I open everything in a new window, and juggle windows at the desktop level with the help of a nifty Alt+Tab enhancer. I know there's a use case for using seperate windows to group tabs by topic, but I don't like having that organization forced on me. Also, I don't use a tiling window manager, but they tend to have their own ways of dealing with large numbers of windows, I hear.
insertnickname 13y ago
Actually, they also removed the ability to disable the navigation bar, which is very annoying for me because I use Vimperator. It can be removed by installing an extension, but I don't understand why they would remove this functionality.

aluhut 13y ago

I don't get it either. "Status 4 ever" didn't help either. But I found a way: Get this addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/ https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/classicthemerest... Activate the "Bottombar Toolbar" by right clicking somewhere on the top space where the bars are. Now you have a small bar down there. Open the new funky customization menue and drag the "Statustext"-Element down there. The only problem is that you'll find your Start-Button above the text... Somehow I find myself installing even more Add-Ons with every major UI "improvisation" to keep a useful UI. I wish it would be the other way around where you got standard and customized from there.

barrkel 13y ago
This did not work for me. In fact classic theme restorer broke FF's Customize... menu feature, as well as the hamburger menu at the end of the toolbar - it is now completely inoperable, even after removing it.
- aluhut 13y ago
  Ok this is weird. I just repeated the procedure on my office PC and it worked. Do you have an theme active probably?
  - barrkel 13y ago
    As far as I'm aware, I did not have a theme active. I spent several hours debugging this. Chiefly the culprit turned out to be "Default Full Zoom Level" extension. However, during the debugging process, I did a binary search through prefs.js looking for the problem. If I removed this line: user_pref("browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone", "29.0"); ... the browser worked properly again. Very peculiar. Of course, this was written into the prefs.js again upon exit, so when restarted the browser was broken again. Classic Theme Restorer probably wasn't the problem. Probably the problem only showed up because that was the first restart post-upgrade (to enable the extension).

Livven 13y ago

You can put the link preview directly into the address bar with this addon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/link-location-bar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/link-location... Status-4-Evar can actually do the same but it's a bit of a hassle to configure if you don't need its other features.