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General => Technical Help => Topic started by: Roobarb on Monday 02 August 21 18:04 BST (UK)
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I've recently found that my Firefox browser on my laptop no longer displays my most visited bookmarks, they used to be along the top of the screen under the website address. I have the bookmarks marked as Always Show, although I have tried to unticked that option to see if it has any effect but it doesn't untick or make any difference! I can get my bookmarks toolbar to appear as a sidebar.
Not only that, clicking on the hamburger at the top right doesn't do anything at all and the cross to close down the browser isn't visible until I hover over it and even then it only shows as a red square. The option to restore down the screen is similar, only shows as a grey square when I hover over it.
I'm attaching a screenshot of how the top of the screen was when I opened the browser, nothing has changed now except that I have a couple of tabs open.
Can anyone please help? I'm pulling my hair out with this!
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Hi Roobarb,
If you click on the three lines at the top right of the Firefox page, scroll down the options that appear and select More Tools. From there select Customize Toolbar.
At the bottom left there are four options. Clicking on the word Toolbar, you have the option to select Menu Bar. Click on that. From there you can choose how you want your Favourites displayed - in the library symbol or on the address bar with the bookmark symbol. Just left click on the choice you want and drag it up to the right side of the address bar. If you decide you don't want it there and prefer to find your sites by looking in Bookmarks on the menu bar, just right click on the symbol you added to the right of the address bar, and select delete.
Hope this helps. Marion
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From your screenshot, it looks as though your bookmarks toolbar is there, but it's empty. Does that sound like what you're getting? And if you view your bookmarks in a sidebar, are they in the Bookmarks Toolbar folder or one of the others?
I'm not sure I'm going to be able to give you the answer, but for comparison I've attached clips of my menus/settings, and I do have the toolbar showing and filled with bookmarks:
The Menu one has Always Show ticked (as you said yours is)
The Customise one shows what the toolbar looks like in the Customise window, with the toolbar items showing at the left hand end
The Library one shows the Bookmarks Toolbar folder in context, and I can open it up to show the subfolders and bookmarks that I normally have showing.
All I can suggest at present is that you compare your settings to mine, and make sure that the Bookmarks Toolbar folder (in the Library or sidebar) contains the bookmarks you want to see. I hope that helps........
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Thanks for the replies.
Marion, clicking on the three lines ( the hamburger) doesn't work so unfortunately I'm unable to follow the further steps from there.
Arthurk, I can access the bookmarks from the sidebar or library, it's just that the most used ones don't show in a horizontal row below the current website address. Your picture seems to show them in a similar way to how mine used to be.
It seems strange that not only this has disappeared but that the other things at the top of the screen don't work properly. The home page used to be Google but even that isn't there now. I can usually manage to sort things like this out but I must admit this has me baffled.
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I can't think what else to suggest, but if anything else does come to me I'll post again (not before tomorrow).
Meanwhile, are the bookmarks you want on the toolbar still in the Bookmarks Toolbar folder (which you should be able to access via the library or sidebar)?
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You could try refreshing Firefox.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings
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Roobarb,
Perhaps this is what you'd like:
On the menu bar click on Tools. Go down the menu that opens and left click on Settings. A page opens that will show, on the left side, General, Home, Search etc. Click on Home. To the right of these options, there should be one called Firefox Home Content. If there is not a check mark beside Shortcuts, click in the empty box so that one appears. Close Firefox and then re-open it. Hopefully this is it.
Marion
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Arthur, yes the bookmarks are still there in the folder although not as they appeared before, ie I had a number of folders such as Family History with bookmarks for TNA etc. The folders don't appear to be there now.
Marion, I haven't been able to get back onto the laptop yet, will check that out when I do, thanks.
Erato, I'm hoping it doesn't come to that but fear it might. I must have done that previously as there's a folder on my desktop called Old Firefox Data, I think it was put there automatically but can't remember the circumstances.
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Marion, I've had a look at the settings as suggested, the options in Home don't show Firefox Home Content. There's an option to the right of Home to Restore Defaults (have been tempted to try this but will wait and see what you say!)
Under that it has a heading New Windows and Tabs. The options within that for Homepage and new windows are Firefox Home (Default), Custom URLs, Blank page.
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I don't think the Home settings will affect what appears in the bookmarks toolbar, though they do include an option to show some of the bookmarks on your home page and/or new tab.
From what you say, Roobarb, it seems that the bookmarks and/or containing folders have mysteriously disappeared from the Bookmarks Toolbar folder. I don't know why or how this might have happened, but I have two suggestions for getting them back. Before you try either of them, though, go to the Library and select All Bookmarks on the left. Then in the top menu use the Import and Backup item to create a backup (onto the desktop will be fine - it's a temporary measure in case my suggestions don't work and you need to get back to where you are now).
First suggestion: in the same Import and Backup menu, hover on Restore. This should bring up a list of backups which Firefox has done automatically, and with any luck one of them will get your toolbar back to how it used to be, though you'll lose any bookmarks you've added since the date of the backup. (Use the same menu ('Choose File' at the bottom) if you need to restore the backup you created manually.)
Second suggestion: if the bookmarks/folders you want are in the Library but not in the bookmarks toolbar, when you're in the Library you can right-click and copy them and paste them into the toolbar folder. (Moving or dragging is also possible, but I'm suggesting Copy just in case there's a problem I don't understand with the toolbar - this way you'll still have the bookmarks/folders in the location you're copying from.)
Just one more thing - have you updated Firefox recently, or added or updated any extensions? I found a very old support forum post where someone had what seemed a similar problem, and an updated extension seemed to be the culprit.
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Have now tried your first suggestion and although the bookmarks are still there the missing toolbar hasn't appeared. Re the second suggestion, I've previously tried to copy and to drag the bookmarks but it didn't work and still doesn't after following suggestion 2. :(
I haven't deliberately updated Firefox but sometimes these things just pop up and carry on, I just leave them to it so I'm not really sure whether it's updated itself recently. I've had a look too at posts about extensions, again I haven't intentionally changed anything.
I think there must be something fundamentally wrong, not only do I have the bookmarks problem and others mentioned but but it won't let me choose the default search engine or choose a home page. It's looking more and more likely that I'll have to take the option Erato suggested.
Thank you for all your help.
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If you're getting other problems, a refresh probably will be the way to go, and the page Erato linked to looks admirably clear about what will and won't happen. I didn't follow all the links there, but the pages I did look at seemed equally straightforward.
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Thanks, I'll have to have a go before it drives me completely up the wall! ;D Will let you know - if I can't access it on my laptop it'll be from my tablet, here's hoping it'll be from my laptop.
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I followed the instructions but it came up with a Parsing Error ??? ???
I downloaded Firefox again and it seems to have worked (part of screen shown :D ) although it does keep popping up with this Parsing error that seems to relate to Chrome. Now I am mystified. ???
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Roobarb. did you know you can edit the title of the shortcuts?
If you didn't. Right click on icon, click edit bookmark then shorten description to what you can understand. After a while you may become so used to it, that you will have like me just a row of icons.
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No, I don't think I did know that. Thanks, will give it a go. :)
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Glad to hear that normal service is more or less resumed. I've no idea what that error message is about, though it isn't about Chrome. If you keep getting it, it might be worth asking again about it.
Firefox (and some other applications, I believe) uses 'chrome' as a kind of location/description of the files that control its interface. You'll see that the bit beginning 'chrome' is set out like a website's URL. 'https:' tells a browser to look on the internet; 'chrome:' tells it to look in its own files relating to its appearance etc. (Very simplified, and possibly not 100% technically accurate, but probably as much as most of us need to know.)
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The simplified version will do fine for me thanks. :D Your reference to files relating to its appearance made me think - when it first opened up it was as shown, ie with a light background. I did a reboot to see if it would get rid of the error message and when it came back on it was as if someone had turned the light out, the background was black instead of white. I corrected it by going into the settings and selecting the light theme but I still got the box with the error message popping up. I wonder if it'll be black again when I go back in. I can live with it if that's the only problem.
I've edited the titles on my shortcuts and have been able to fit another one in. :)