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I Don’t Like The New Firefox Search

   February 12th, 2015 Brian Herzog

This post should have the subtitle, Turning back the clock, one "feature" at a time.

So the internet is all about sharing, right, no matter how small and insignificant the topic? Here's a small and insignificant tidbit I thought I'd share, because I'm an anti-change curmudgeon and this was actually a major deal to me.

I've started the process of updating all the Firefox browsers in my life to the latest version. Apparently the last time I updated was version 32.0.1, and am now updating to 35.0.1. Mostly everything is fine, but I HATE how the "improved" search bar works.

Most of you will probably be familiar with the old way:

ffsearch-old

You type in your search terms, and can choose whichever engine you'd like to use. And what you type in stays there, and which engine you choose also stays.

The new way is different:

ffsearch-new

I feel like listing all the reasons I don't like the new method would be petty and whiny (although not unlike me), so suffice to say the way it works just does not fit my workflow.

But happily, Firefox is open source, and offers a way to change back to the old way. A quick search online lead me to the answer:

  • Go into the about:config
  • Type oneoff in the Filter box
  • Double-click to toggle browser.search.showOneOffButtons to false
  • Restart Firefox

The old search bar interface comes back, and once again all is right with the world.



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