Is there a way to opt out of all but the most vital downloads?!!
First: I delay the weekly useless downloads as long as possible. Everytime I have to download you change things for the worse, and I spend sometimes even hours, like now, trying to get my things back to what they were. I do a lot of research and do not have time to continually have to go back and undo all of the changes to my very carefull set up toolbars at the top. Can I opt out of this madness except for the most truly vital downloads? Secondly: After the latest download, I find a star symbol for bookmarks between my already too short search bar and my address bar. I use that space to lengthen my search bar a little as it does not allow a lot of length. I wish there was a separate place for a long search bar as it never is long enough to make my searches fully visible. I already had 4 symbols for bookmarks in my top toolbars. I don't need a damn star preventing space between the search and address bars. And when I need to clic on one of those bars, the star thing activates and I get bookmarks instead of the address bar, etc. What is the point of these useless changes??? I went to the menu: it had 'customize tool bar' as one of the first options. Now you have to hunt around for it. After wasting time, I found it: you have to go all the way to the bottom of the options where you'll find tools; then click on the forward arrow beside it and that takes you to the customize toolbar menu. But when that comes up the page changes and the star symbol disappears. I have tried to drag the star symbol to some other places but it won't budge. Does anyone know how I can get it off my toolbar? If not, is it ok for me to go back to my former version of ff, and how do I do that? Thank you. Sorry for the rant, but this happens everytime and they never used to have updates all the time like they do now. Everyone I know is aggravated about this..
Wszystkie odpowiedzi (3)
Firefox has a major release approximately monthly, and in between there may be emergency security or stability updates. You can find information on what is in an update using this page:
https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/releases/
As far as I know, the notification is identical for minor and major releases, so if you need to choose among them, you'll need to see what has come out.
In the future:
If you want less change to your browser, you can consider switching over to the next Extended Support Release. About once a year, a version of Firefox is selected to be the ESR for the next year (currently, it is Firefox 78, the next one will be Firefox 91). The ESR only gets selected security patches during that year to maintain maximum stability. I don't suggest downgrading right now because your data might not all convert properly, but you could look at switching after Labor Day. More info if desired: Switch to Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) for personal use.
Regarding the star icon, do you mean this one that turns blue when you click it:
I'm not sure whether you're referring to that button or a different one. That icon -- to add/edit a bookmark for the current page -- is built-in to the right end of the address bar. It is not a separate/removable button.
(There is a way to hide that star button using a custom style rule in a userChrome.css file -- #star-button-box {display: none !important;} -- if needed.)
Thanks for your reply, JSCHER. The part about getting an ff version that is stable for a year is helpful. But I am an older person and was not raised with computers. I have no idea of what your last sentence means. "There is a way to hide that star button using a custom style rule in a userChrome.css file -- #star-button-box {display: none !important;} -- if needed.)". You may as well be speaking Mandarin. I don't want to hide the blue star thing, I want to remove it. I used to be able to drag the search bar back to where that is and push the address bar further back, but now cannot because the star is there. There are 4 other things on my toolbars that I don't need [why have more than i] related to bookmarks. And again, frequently when you click on search bar you miss I guess and the bookmarks flood on instead. Is there a way to get rid of this unnecessary star icon?
Can you attach a screenshot to show your current toolbar layout?
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-create-screenshot-my-problem
- use a compressed image type like PNG or JPG to save the screenshot
Note that you only need to right-click free space on any toolbar to find "Customize" (it may also work with right-clicking buttons that do not have a context menu), so no need to open the "3-bar" Firefox menu button drop-down list.
You can place the search bar on any toolbar and also in the chevron overflow area on the Navigation Toolbar. The latter still allows to access the search bar with its keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+K). You can place the mouse between the location and search bar to be able to change the relative size (total size remains the same).
In current releases using the location bar for searches isn't that difficult, so maybe try master this.