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How do I make the address bar smaller?

  • 5 replies
  • 6 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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I made the mistake of upgrading to Firefox 29 with the Australis UI. While I am seriously considering reverting back to the most recent version before FF29, I'm going to try and salvage what I can first. I've already modified the userChrome.css file to get my tabs back where I want them. It makes the screen a bit jittery, but for now I can live with that. A problem of equal magnitude is the URL/address bar. It spans about 70% of the screen. How do I make it smaller, i.e. about half the size it is now? I don't care if I can see the entire URL, and that space can better be used for buttons I actually use, and used to be able to customize in the space that is now gone. And in that vein, where are all the buttons I used to be able to add and move to where I needed them? Thanks in advance.

I made the mistake of upgrading to Firefox 29 with the Australis UI. While I am seriously considering reverting back to the most recent version before FF29, I'm going to try and salvage what I can first. I've already modified the userChrome.css file to get my tabs back where I want them. It makes the screen a bit jittery, but for now I can live with that. A problem of equal magnitude is the URL/address bar. It spans about 70% of the screen. How do I make it smaller, i.e. about half the size it is now? I don't care if I can see the entire URL, and that space can better be used for buttons I actually use, and used to be able to customize in the space that is now gone. And in that vein, where are all the buttons I used to be able to add and move to where I needed them? Thanks in advance.

All Replies (5)

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The location bar should automatically shrink in length if you place extra buttons on the Navigation Toolbar.

You can place max-length on the urlbar-container.

#urlbar-container { max-width: 400px !important; }
#search-container { max-width: 200px !important; }
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Fair enough. Where are the buttons? I clicked the options icon in the upper right hand corner, but I saw only 11 buttons--the zoom set, Cut/Copy/Paste, New Window, New Private Window, Save Page, etc, plus a few others when I clicked Customize. Unfortunately, most of these are the buttons I took off the tool bar in previous versions, and the others aren't the ones I was looking for.

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What buttons are you looking for?

You can look at the Classic Theme Restorer extension to restore some functionality that was lost with the arrival of the Australis style in Firefox 29.

  • You can check out the settings of the CTR extension via its Options/Preferences button on the "Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions" page.
  • You can find extra toolbar buttons and more toolbar settings in Customize (3-bar Firefox menu button > Customize)

See also:

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Thanks. The buttons I was looking for most were the Stop and Reload buttons. The tiny Stop/Reload button in the address bar is too small when navigating speed counts, and it is an either/or situation. When the window is loading it's just a stop button, and when the window is loaded it's just a reload button. Since a lot of pages automatically refresh at various intervals, frequently when I am reading them I need to stop the reload. I was able to position the larger, individual Stop/Reload buttons where I was able to access them with a flick of the wrist and their size gave me a margin without missing them. With the tiny buttons, by the time I get the pointer up, over and positioned over the button pages are either reloaded, causing me to have to scroll down and find the point in the page where I was reading, which causes me to lose even more time and risk another reload. On the load side of the equation, when I am demonstrating things like navigation to a user or how web page edits look after they are saved it takes longer to position the pointer without looking like I am fumbling, and that looks bad when time is of the essence and I am helping several people. What I was previously able to do by touch and reflex I now have to do by visually scanning, zoning in and trying to hit the button. It makes presentations awkward and clumsy. I'll pass on adding any more extensions. When troubleshooting they are the first thing that must be disabled, and having to restart Firefox costs too much time.

Modified by Yozilla

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The Classic Theme Restorer adds a customizable stop and reload button to the Customize palette that you can move outside the location bar container.