Features missing in Firefox 4
I don't understand why certain changes were made to Firefox 4.0. My Refresh and Stop buttons were gone and after frustrating research I couldn't find a way to restore them. The little down arrow beside the Forward and Back buttons was gone, and again I could not restore it. I always loved and used that feature to quickly return to a previous page. One thing I forgot to look at before I found an older version (3.6.16) and installed that was the Most Visited button. Hopefully that wasn't thrown in the trash too since I use it all the time.
The old song goes, "You never miss the water till the well runs dry" and you quickly appreciate that sentiment after upgrading. Are fixes coming for these and other issues? I understand the "Save all Tabs" feature has been trashed too. Only found that out while browsing the Help site for Firefox 4 issues and fixes. Despite advice to stay with 4.0, it was quickly replaced here with 3.6 until annoying things are addressed, but will they be?
All Replies (6)
In Firefox 4 by default the Stop, Go and Reload (refresh) buttons are combined and attached to the right hand edge of the location bar.
When you are typing in the location bar it will show the Go button. When a site is loading it shows the Stop button. At other times it shows the Reload button.
If you want separate buttons, right-click on a toolbar and choose Customize, you can then drag and drop the stop or reload buttons and place them elsewhere. If you place them in the order "Reload-Stop" on the right hand edge of the location bar they will be combined again. For more details on customizing the toolbar see https://support.mozilla.com/kb/How+to+customize+the+toolbar
You can get the drop down list by either right-clicking on the back/forward buttons, or holding down the left button until the list appears.
If you want the drop-down arrow you can add it with the Back/forward dropmarker add-on - https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/backforward-dropmarker
Thanks for posting these fixes TonyE
Will be trying these eventually but I'll be watching the forum for a while to see if other issues have been addressed, like the Save all Tabs" before I try 4.0 again.
I was really surprised to see all the issues and frustration on the Help Forum over 4.0 as I'm used to Firefox just getting better and better. The recent forum looked more like the old Microsoft boards after Windows95 was released.
For "Save all tabs" do you mean bookmark all tabs?
If you do, you can access bookmark all tabs by right-clicking on a tab, or use the keyboard shortcut Control+Shift+D
If you mean being asked to save the current session when you close Firefox, Firefox now always stores the old session, and you can access it by going to the History menu and selecting "Restore Previous Session"
If you want Firefox to display the message to save the session, it can be turned back on by changing some preferences.
- Type about:config into the location bar and press enter
- Accept the warning message that appears, you will be taken to a list of preferences
- Locate the preference browser.tabs.warnOnClose, if its value is set to false, double-click on it to change its value to true
- Repeat this for these 3 preferences browser.warnOnQuit, browser.warnOnRestart and browser.showQuitWarning
If you always open the last set of tabs, an alternative approach is this:
- Click the orange Firefox button, then select options to open the options window
- Go to the General panel
- Change the setting "When Firefox starts" to "Show my windows and tabs from last time"
You sure know your way around the settings TonyE.
What I was referring to was on occasion I need to shut down Firefox but want to save where I am. With multiple windows open if I attempt a shut down Firefox I get a message asking "Do you want Firefox to save your tabs for the next time it starts?" This usually only happens when some other application has completed an update and tells me I need to do a restart as I normally leave my PC on 24/7. Getting back to all my sessions at once on restart is very handy so the second fix you mentioned could solve this for me (and others).
Thanks for your help!
Firefox 4 saves the previous session automatically, so there is no longer need for the dialog asking if you want to save the current session.
You can use "Firefox > History > Restore Previous Session" to get the previous session.
There is also a "Restore Previous Session" button on the default about:home Home page.
Another possibility is to use:
- Tools > Options > General > Startup: "When Firefox Starts": "Show my windows and tabs from last time"
Some menu entries are hidden by default and only appear if you use the keyboard to open the menu.
"Bookmark All Tabs" and "Bookmark All Tabs" in the Bookmarks menu are among them.
You can see the difference if you use Alt+F or Alt+B to the File and Bookmarks menu and compare that to what you see if you use the mouse to open the menu after you have made the menu bar visible by pressing Alt or by pressing F10.
- "Bookmark This Page" and "Bookmark All Tabs" no longer show in the Bookmarks menu unless you open the Bookmarks menu via the keyboard (Alt + B).
- "Bookmark This Page" can be accessed via the right-click context menu of that browser page.
- "Bookmark All Tabs" can be accessed via the right-click context menu of a tab on the tab bar.
Whew! Thanks for all this but I'm not likely to recall it all later from memory. I'll have to set myself up a little manual to refer to from time to time. At 61 I'm always getting an Out of Memory message myself. :)