Resizing URL & Search fields is impossible
Resizing is supposed to take place when a double-headed arrow appears to the right of a field. Doing this with the URL field causes that to shrink and the search field to grow. This is not the action I need as Stop and other buttons are hidden behind these fields.
Modified by Ed1P
All Replies (5)
Are you sure the buttons are hidden, the default setting in Firefox 4 is for the stop, reload and go buttons to be combined into one button attached to the right end of the location bar. When you type into the location bar it shows the go button, when a site is loading it shows the stop button, at over times it is the reload button.
If you want the buttons to be separate, right-click on a toolbar and choose Customize. Either move the stop & reload buttons away from the right end of the location bar by dragging and dropping them, or change their order to stop-reload. If the order is reload-stop they become combined.
Modified by TonyE
I am positive they were hidden. I still cannot solve the resizing issue, but I managed to reveal the hidden stop etc buttons by editing the bar, and removing ALL the buttons. When I replaced the buttons they went into their correct positions and I inserted a separator to try and stop the URL field from encroaching. This appears to have worked, but I still dislike the way that the search and url fields are tied together.
Sorry, the Location bar and Search bar sizing being inversely "tied" together has been like that for like 3 years now, it really isn't any different now than in the last 3 or 4 major versions of Firefox. The change with the Stop, Reload, and Go button being combined into one space in the Location bar is new to Firefox 4.0. The "thinking" is that only one button is active at any one time, so why have all three buttons being on display all the time and waste all that Toolbar space. But as you have discovered the developers made it easy for users to separate and move those 3 buttons to their preferences and didn't impose their will on all Firefox users.
Personally, I like that new feature, but it's becoming evident to me that once again Mozilla overestimated the average users intellect when implementing that change.
Apart from taking issue with the tone of your response, I was forced into trying to do a URL/Search resize because FIREFOX 4 WAS BROKEN ON INSTALLATION. It had nothing to do with either my intellect or technical capabilities. For clarity NONE of the buttons which were supposed to be on the right of the search field were there, they were ALL hidden somewhere in the middle of Location/Search, and only became accessible when all other buttons were removed.
All my measures in trying to resize the URL/Search bar were thwarted because the damned things were tied together so making it impossible to resize the combination to a smaller size and so reveal the MANY obscured buttons. The absence of a usable STOP button was a real pain as many sites were Slashdotted by the Japanese Tsunami.
[EDIT] In the interests of being constructive and not making 'smart' comments like the previous respondent, the probable reason that I found Firefox 4 broken on installation was that a Babelfish icon had usurped the far right field, thereby forcing stop etc into a hidden area, where they could not even be seen for editing under normal circumstances.
Modified by Ed1P
Create a new profile exclusively for the Firefox 4 version and create a desktop shortcut with -P "profile" appended to the target to launch that profile.