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Why won't Firefox 23 display menu bar, bookmarks bar or dock despite uninstall/reinstall, restarts, etc., though Safari is working fine?

  • 4 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by roughbeast

roughbeast
roughbeast
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FF was working fine until today, when all of a sudden it stopped displaying the menu bar, bookmarks, navigation, and even my dock! All I get is a full page display of Google. This happened when I went up to check history - got the beachball, typical of FF and history, I've found. So I had to Quit FF and open it again, and the screwed-up page is what I got. FF has given me plenty of problems over the years, but this is brand new. I'm working on my friend's Macbook Air, don't know what version of FF she had, but I uninstalled it (by trashing it), restarted and downloaded the latest FF. Same problem. I did a Disk Utility Repair Permissions, no effect. I'm having to do this in Safari because there are literally zero controls in FF - not even a place for a URL. I don't know when FF 23 came out so I don't know if that's what she already had. Of course, Troubleshooting Information isn't available, nor does the "educated guesses about your current browser and operating system" work. It's OS X 10.6.8.

FF was working fine until today, when all of a sudden it stopped displaying the menu bar, bookmarks, navigation, and even my dock! All I get is a full page display of Google. This happened when I went up to check history - got the beachball, typical of FF and history, I've found. So I had to Quit FF and open it again, and the screwed-up page is what I got. FF has given me plenty of problems over the years, but this is brand new. I'm working on my friend's Macbook Air, don't know what version of FF she had, but I uninstalled it (by trashing it), restarted and downloaded the latest FF. Same problem. I did a Disk Utility Repair Permissions, no effect. I'm having to do this in Safari because there are literally zero controls in FF - not even a place for a URL. I don't know when FF 23 came out so I don't know if that's what she already had. Of course, Troubleshooting Information isn't available, nor does the "educated guesses about your current browser and operating system" work. It's OS X 10.6.8.

Chosen solution

Make sure that you do not run Firefox in full screen mode (press F11 or Fn + F11 to toggle; Mac: Command+Shift+F).

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All Replies (4)

philipp
philipp
  • Moderator
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hello, press the shift key while firefox is launching (all other windows have to be closed first) & reset the browser: Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings

kobe
kobe
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Maybe also attempt to delete the localstore.rdf file in the profile folder.

LOCATING THE PROFILE FOLDER: Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data

Corrupt Localstore.rdf: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Corrupt_localstore.rdf

Please delete that file explained (resets toolbar layout).

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Chosen Solution

Make sure that you do not run Firefox in full screen mode (press F11 or Fn + F11 to toggle; Mac: Command+Shift+F).

roughbeast
roughbeast Question owner
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Thanks! It worked. I figured it had to be something simple like that, but couldn't find anywhere to turn off (or on) full-screen mode - pressing command+F of course only got search. If I can ask another question, can you tell me why, in OS X default Apps (the one not in Finder) FF is grayed out with the universal stop symbol (slash in a circle) over it? It's the only app like that, while in Finder, it's OK.