darkoshi | Firefox status bar

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My main Firefox browser that I use at work, which is on an ESR update channel, was finally updated from a pre-Quantum version to version 60.

I found that there is actually a way to get back a status bar, for displaying URLs when hovering over links, rather than having the URLs pop up and disappear:

http://www.optimiced.com/en/2018/02/11/restore-status-bar-in-firefox-quantum/

It sounds like there's even a way to put add-on buttons on the status bar too. But I haven't tried this yet, so I'm not sure:
https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/comments/8bfxji/been_trying_to_revive_the_addon_bar_statuspanel/

Hmmm. I'll need to see if there's a way of changing the status bar color. I don't like it being gray.

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I'm just this minute starting to look into that flag, but had to stop as soon as I started: it's not in the Beta (63.0b6) and I don't have latest official Firefox installed. I don't know what it being missing from the Beta could mean: either they haven't disabled AutoConfig in Beta or they've disabled it entirely are my two very best guesses. Just gonna dig around for more info on it now, I guess.

Edit: in my first swipe through Google I found the Beta release notes: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/62.0beta/releasenotes/ which say the same thing official release notes do about the flag, so are we supposed to create the flag ourselves? The way it's worded on both pages I thought it was already baked in.

Edit 2: they haven't updated their official FAQ, either, to explain AutoConfig's soon to be limited to ESR, only: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customizing-firefox-using-autoconfig

Edit 3: created the flag (New > Boolean), set it to true, created a Chrome folder and userChrome.css using these instructions: https://www.howtogeek.com/334716/how-to-customize-firefoxs-user-interface-with-userchrome.css/, then copied/pasted the CSS from the first link in your top post into it and it worked. Immediately disabled the flag, restarted Firefox, and the userchrome.css is still working, so apparently userChrome.css isn't dependent on AutoConfig.

I was going to put off messing with Firefox internal CSS (I have a hundred linkposts I'm clearly never going to make) but wondering if userChrome.css is dependent on AutoConfig to work just blew that idea to bits. At least now I've got that answer. Now I might as well see how the add-on icon CSS works, since I'm in there anyhow.

Edited (more info, sort of; added links; added dependency followup) Date: 2018-09-18 01:31 am (UTC)

The flag doesn't show up in my v62 FF either.
It's odd that they named the flag "general.config.sandbox_enabled", when by default without the flag, sandboxing is supposed to now be enabled. So I guess one has to add it and set it to false, to disable it. But it sounds like in the Beta version which you are using, it has no effect either way... or maybe the CSS that you used isn't affected by it, if the CSS only includes tweaks still supported by the API.

Yeah, the flag doesn't affect userChrome.css or userChrome.js at all (I've tried it every which way and even reset it (cleared the value) just to make sure).

The JS and CSS in the first link in your top post didn't work, but for some reason this identical JS did (I've done a line-by-line comparison and can't find any errors in the first. I could run an actual diff but don't _think_ I have to?): https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/8kxpbc/is_there_any_extension_that_can_create_a_status/dzbzw9v/ (parent: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/8kxpbc/is_there_any_extension_that_can_create_a_status/) Edit: ran a diff but it just brought up spacing and comment variations that shouldn't affect the result.

It looks like the instructions there are incomplete so I got the JS at the second link to work only by accident by adding and deleting other files before I added the bottombar JS: you need that and the CSS they give you, but you also need an XML file found here: https://github.com/nuchi/firefox-quantum-userchromejs ~~(and you might also need the userChrome.js file found there, but until I can clear Fx script cache a few more times, I won't know for sure!)~~ edit: you don't need it, actually, just the JS, CSS and XML files mentioned are needed.

Screen cap, with a few add-on icons dragged over for demo purposes: https://intoolate.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/bottombar.png

Turns out AutoConfig and userChrome.css can control very similar things so maybe that's why people get them mixed up: https://www.userchrome.org/what-is-userchrome-js.html. As far as I can tell one seems to have no dependency on the other, while AutoConfig can do things like set browser preferences that I'm thinking userChrome can't.

Edited (more info) Date: 2018-09-19 02:13 am (UTC)

I'm glad it is working for you. Now when I work on mine, I'll at least know it *should* still work for the time being, as long as I get the syntax right.