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No "back button" when searching from location bar

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by FredMcD

AllesMeins
AllesMeins
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This might be a stupid question and I'm shocked that I noticed this only now as a long time Firefox user... If I use the location bar to search for something Firefox opens the Google result page, but disables the "back"-button. So I can't get back to the page I've been visiting before. I've been wondering for a long time why sometimes clicking back doesn't lead me back to a page I know I was visiting earlier, now I finally figured out that this is because I was using the search from location bar. So my question: Is this the normal behavior or a bug in my installation? Is there anything I can do to fix this?

This might be a stupid question and I'm shocked that I noticed this only now as a long time Firefox user... If I use the location bar to search for something Firefox opens the Google result page, but disables the "back"-button. So I can't get back to the page I've been visiting before. I've been wondering for a long time why sometimes clicking back doesn't lead me back to a page I know I was visiting earlier, now I finally figured out that this is because I was using the search from location bar. So my question: Is this the normal behavior or a bug in my installation? Is there anything I can do to fix this?

All Replies (3)

the-edmeister
the-edmeister
  • Moderator
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Normal when navigating away from the default "Homepage" and the "New Tab" pages in Firefox. It's been years since Firefox offered "go back" for those two internal pages.

No nothing to "fix" other than setting your own Homepage that is actually "on" the internet. New Tab page might get "go back" with an extension that modifies the default New Tab page, but just speculation on my part . Haven't used an extension like that with Quantum 57 and later versions of Firefox. Overall I just disable or change the features that are on those 2 "internal pages" thru Options / Preferences in Firefox.

AllesMeins
AllesMeins Question owner
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Thank you for your reply. I think I was a little unclear in describing my problem. I'm not navigating away from the "Homepage", but from some normal page.

Let's say I'm browsing https://mozilla.org. Then I click on the location bar and insert a search query. Now Google opens and the "back"-button is disabled. So I lose the ability to go back to Mozilla and all other pages that I've visited in this tab.

FredMcD
FredMcD
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Are you sure you did no open a new tab instead?

Left-click the back arrow. What does it show?