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Green lock icon locking out url input area

  • 4 tontu
  • 1 am na jafe-jafe bii
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  • i mujjee tontu mooy cor-el

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I most often do research and thus open up a score of browser tabs with a plan to later click and copy each url and post in a document I am preparing. You new recent "green lock" and the green text that so often overlays the entire URL area has rendered my copying the URL I am on as a worthless attempt. With the super long "green text" URL lock-outs from some websites, I simply can no longer do a copy of the URL I am on from anywhere I can see. Even if the company providing the lock text has not overlaid the entire line with a string of worthless information, the small window to the right of the vertical bar (which will show a URL in some instances) is unmanageable.

Why not give the users of Firefox an opportunity to accept security updates and yet select an option to "leave things the hell alone" if we as users don't want all these new half-thought-out improvements you keep forcing on us with the massive and relentless changes you keep implementing to this browser? I don't want a long string of green text blocking my ability to both copy the URL that I am on and preventing me from entering a new URL to over ride the browser session I am no longer interested in. I now have to close the tab and re-open a new one.

And philosophically speaking, what is the point of a URL input area when the area goes into lock-down? I don't want these changes! The changes you keep making do nothing for productivity. They only frustrate and confuse. Please leave the basic operation of this browser alone.

I most often do research and thus open up a score of browser tabs with a plan to later click and copy each url and post in a document I am preparing. You new recent "green lock" and the green text that so often overlays the entire URL area has rendered my copying the URL I am on as a worthless attempt. With the super long "green text" URL lock-outs from some websites, I simply can no longer do a copy of the URL I am on from anywhere I can see. Even if the company providing the lock text has not overlaid the entire line with a string of worthless information, the small window to the right of the vertical bar (which will show a URL in some instances) is unmanageable. Why not give the users of Firefox an opportunity to accept security updates and yet select an option to "leave things the hell alone" if we as users don't want all these new half-thought-out improvements you keep forcing on us with the massive and relentless changes you keep implementing to this browser? I don't want a long string of green text blocking my ability to both copy the URL that I am on and preventing me from entering a new URL to over ride the browser session I am no longer interested in. I now have to close the tab and re-open a new one. And philosophically speaking, what is the point of a URL input area when the area goes into lock-down? I don't want these changes! The changes you keep making do nothing for productivity. They only frustrate and confuse. Please leave the basic operation of this browser alone.

All Replies (4)

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hi, i'm not sure why you think that this would be a recent change in firefox - this (=organisational name of a ev-certificate displayed in full in the address bar) has been the state of affairs since approximately 10 years now. if you have to copy urls often, maybe an addon like the following can be of help to you: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/copy-urls-expert/

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See:

  • [/questions/1117455] The security verification information takes up the whole address bar and I don't want to see it (for sites I use regularly where I need to see and edit URLs)

Add code to the userChrome.css file below the default @namespace line.


@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); /* only needed once */

/* Site Identity Button, hide label */
#identity-box #identity-icon-labels {display:none}
#identity-box:hover #identity-icon-labels {display:-moz-box}

The customization files userChrome.css (user interface) and userContent.css (websites) are located in the chrome folder in the Firefox profile folder.

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It sounds as though you have a lot of buttons on the toolbar, and the URL bar is shrinking to accommodate those. It may be that the developers need to set a minimum width to the URL bar to avoid the compression.

Meanwhile, for copying, if you right-click the address instead of trying to select it with the mouse, Firefox should auto-select the entire address and one of the options on the right-click context menu will be Copy. Might save some frustration.

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There are these prefs to determine the behavior if you click the location bar:

  • browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll
  • browser.urlbar.doubleClickSelectsAll

You can also press the ESC key to select the full URL or restore the URL to its original.