Woke up this morning to find that Firefox Nightly has finally removed the separate navigation bar on mobile, apparently due to an overwhelmingly negative user response. But it was a feature I really enjoyed using, being the closest non-Chromium setup I could find similar to Samsung Internet, and would like to re-enable if possible.
Does anyone know if there are any extensions or other add-ons for FF mobile which enable any sort of nav bar layout or similar? Or is my only recourse to grab the previous version of the APK and stay on that until I can find a better alternative?
Example screenshots included if anyone is not sure what I am describing.
Standard Firefox:
My old setup in Samsung Internet:
Firefox Nightly when it still had the nav bar (RIP):
oh so thats why i dont have it anymore
one day it was just gone and the release notes was about bug fixing, and i got really confused (i think i just didnt use ff for a while or it updated a bunch of versions at once)
Why did it get a negative response? It’s great
It takes up space on the screen, which I know for some folks makes it a worthless/intrusive addition. IIRC it was also the case early on in the nightly builds that there was no way to turn it off either, which bothered people as well.
Everyone has “modes” they get used to using their apps with (and I am no exception in that regard, which is why I am here with this question in the first place), and when something new is added which disrupts someone’s usual mode, that causes friction and a negative impression.
I know my experience is niche, being that I am a relatively newer Firefox mobile user who liked having that feature precisely because it more closely resembled the non-Firefox experience that was more familiar to me. So to an extent, I understand this decision that was made to avoid alienating the core user, even if that means potentially dissatisfying fringe users like myself. I also can’t complain because this is the nightly build, where things change on a whim and there are no guarantees that any feature makes the cut (I would have been on stable build if this feature existed in the stable build at all).
Not to mention that Mozilla also isn’t rolling in cash, especially with their future income model uncertain as the US government continues to go after Google’s partner agreements that are currently propping Mozilla up, so they have to make difficult decisions about which features to spend time and resources supporting and which to cut.
But it still stinks, y’know?
Yeah coming from “normal” Firefox mobile it took me a minute to get used to it but this morning I immediately noticed it was gone and now I want it back :(
Like other stated. It used up too much space. Most of want it did can be done via Android or gestures if you have them.
Even the redesigned menu us a bit annoying since it takes one extra button press to get to extensions onto of an upward swipe.
As far as perhaps pitting it for you, try via the Secret Menu, of the mobile version of the Developer Mode.
I always set the address bar to the bottom of the screen so I get everything (search bar, tabs button, backwards, etc) in an accessible place.
Seems like back, forward, share, and refresh are still buried in the context menu, though. It’s more button presses.
Would also love to have “Find on page” face up.
I still have it. Just checked and the things are still there.
Which version are you on, out of curiosity? Wondering if you might be on an earlier version that hasn’t updated yet or if they might be doing A/B testing or something.
Just realised I actually have not updated
