Firefox Bookmarks radically changed.

[Loose rivets]

fly-by-wire, that's got my attention. Sadly I downgraded my Vaio laptop to W7 because that trade name was sold to investors and they didn't want to spend money on writing W10 drivers. I got that on a call to SONY. As an i7 machine, it was always a poor effort. Nice keyboard and that was important for pounding away at a novel.

First Principal, that's also got my attention. However, one of my problems has been that I haven't really had many problems lately. I just sit down and read in on science sites, PPRuNe etc., years of just using the kit has made me very lazy.

Don't use bookmarks?! The end phase of my very strange life seems to be being lived vicariously by way of a zillion bookmarks. This last burst of chaotic losses may well be due to my carelessness. When I realised I'd zapped the file on complex electron shells I also realised that I have no instant recourse - that I know of.

I realised I had a refurbished Pentium ASUS on my desk. It had been there a year or more. New battery and I put in an SSD and loaded W10 Pro. Then left it. I just fired it up and was astonished that it accepted my passwords from KeyPass. Google now seems to be embedded in FireFox. Updated everything and found my Bookmarks. No folder for Bookmarks so must be brand new. There is so much to know and always I get just so far. AI tells me I can restore zapped bookmarks but the menus it suggests just don't fit with my menus. Still, a ray of hope for tomorrow.

[Loose rivets]

Saturday 20th Sept 25

My Firefox menu system seems to have put Bookmarks and History back but on the three horizontal lines top right. It works, and may have been there before, but it seems to offer no means of migrating single commands, or the whole shebang to where it was, a FOLDER 4th from the left in Toolbar. It's doubled the keystrokes and what's more, the only ones left are fiddly.

Oh! Two attempted updates show as failed. This one is okay I assume on the 16th Sept 25. 142.0.1

Now 143.0.1

This update hasn't resolved my particular issue. The pop-down from the hamburger allows me Bookmarks and History but I find no way to copy these to another position, namely, a bookmark folder.

My careless pulling of the list of symbols History, Printers, etc., etc. Has not been refreshed by the update. That's rather unimpressive, though I suppose they're not expecting morons to be manipulating their treasures.


When I dragged history, I've a gut feeling it went somewhere. I also have a gut feeling it's hiding there mischievously.




.
.

[teej013]

I do not use the Bookmarks Bar, I prefer to use the old Menu Bar at the top of the screen :


This has the File,Edit,View, etc drop down menus available all the time.
To display the Menu Bar, right click the three horizontal lines, (Hamburger), and select "Customise Toolbar..."



Then select Toolbars and Menu Bar from the bottom of the screen.

I have accidentally left clicked on the Bookmarks dropdown menu and selected and dropped several bookmark folders into other folders by mistake. Followed by a couple of hours tying to find what was moved and to where, then dragging and dropping them back to their correct locations. an undo/go back button would be a life saver in Firefox...

[Loose rivets]

Your post has made me feel quite ill. And much better at the same time.

For many, many years I've resented the line that the menu bar takes up. But, it's too handy not to have. It's got History and Bookmarks on it. It's there now and I can't believe it wasn't there yesterday. It's a good job it's bedtime as I would have to go and lie down.

I've just turned it off and looked carefully at the screen. No, it wasn't like that. It was like it's always been: turned on. I have another laptop which I'll fire up tomorrow. I'll also call my son who's a professor of brains and ask him if expecting to see something somewhere can make it appear in the mind's eye. Right between BBC News and Google was Bookmarks. I spend more than 5 hours a day on this PC. I'm going to get my VAIO now or I'll never get to sleep.

This makes me feel a little better.

I have accidentally left clicked on the Bookmarks dropdown menu and selected and dropped several bookmark folders into other folders by mistake. Followed by a couple of hours tying to find what was moved and to where, then dragging and dropping them back to their correct locations. an undo/go back button would be a life saver in Firefox...

Nope, the VAIO is the same, despite being on W7. (sad that, it was lovely on 10, but no drivers for vital buttons.) I try to keep the screens looking the same, and there is no Bookmarks Folder where I expect to see it. WTFlippin' 'ek?

I suppose having a practice death on the floor behind where I'm sitting now might be an excuse for being daft. I was terribly pleased with myself for not making a fuss. I'll write it up on Jet Blast as it was too funny to go in the serious medical section. But, there I was, heart trying to leap out of my chest, and as calm as someone that'd just got a paper cut.

[Alsacienne]

I too am having 'senior moments' with my computer having upgraded from W10 to W11 with Firefox. Don't like them trying to group my tabs (preferred sites ... and there are a lot of them!) nor that I can't get some embedded links to open in my emails (from trusted third parties) unless I change my browser to Chrome .... GGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRR

[BonnieLass]

Currently having to swap tween browsers (FireFox and Chrome) due to sites that were working perfectly suddenly having issues or vanishing altogether halfway through the day on FireFox.

The only thing I can pinpoint to all of this nonsense starting is a forced "repair" of Windies 11 version 24H2, prior to the "repair" everything was totally fine and the pooter behaved itself perfectly on FireFox.

Starting to consider the possibility that Windies do not like FireFox for some reason.

[Alsacienne]

Starting to consider the possibility that Windies do not like FireFox for some reason.

Whilst I really empathise with you BL, I am a bit relieved to hear that other folk are having the same problem between browsers. Yet another unnecessary complication for folk like me who are tech dinosaurs. Sometimes I am of the opinion that moving forward technically is not always in one's best interests ... but only good for those who have large sums of money invested in the new bells and whistles.

[justapax]

Originally Posted by BonnieLass;

Starting to consider the possibility that Windies do not like FireFox for some reason.

I've been using Firefox (and now Waterfox) since it was called NCSA Mosaic and came on a 720k floppy disk. Then after that it was called Netscape Navigator and came on 2 x 1.44 MB floppy disks. Now it's called Firefox. Firefox sells your data, so a group of programmers rebelled, saying that this was against the original concept, and started Waterfox, which is *very* privacy-driven. The interface is the same. Some sites, like the Nationwide, won't accept it, and so I use Firefox to access my bank account. Waterfox is significantly slimmer and faster than Firefox.

Firefox isn't the problem. Windows is.

The last version of Windows I used was Windows 7, which is still installed on this desktop computer. It used to be that Linux just didn't give you the functionality that Windows did, this is no longer the case. Linux can do everything that Windows can. It just doesn't have as many games. I installed Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on top of Windows 7 and the two operating systems sit perfectly well alongside each other. The laptop came (second-hand) with Windows 10 installed, and it doesn't sit alongside Linux, it kept on trying to take control, so I formatted the hard drive and made it Linux only, incidentally releasing nearly a gig of space.

There are several versions of Linux available, the most popular being Ubuntu and Mint. Try several (they're all free) and find the one that suits you. They are all 'try before you buy', you can run them off a USB stick, to see if you like them, and only install them to your hard drive if you want. They all come with Firefox, Thunderbird and LibreOffice (for Writer and spreadsheets and stuff). It's just the User Interface that is different. Ubuntu is the most Windows-like, Mint is preferred by power users.

If you want other stuff (like VLC to watch videos) these are available in the snapstore - all applications under Linux are free.

What makes you Master (or Mistress) of the Universe is Terminal, the Command Line Interface. You don't have to use it if you don't want to, but it gives you total control of your computer, which Windows keeps you from doing. Unix (of which Linux is an offshoot) has the command su for superuser, which allows you to do anything, including crash your computer. Linux has sudo, which is almost as powerful, but prevents you from bricking the hard drive. If an application you want isn't in the snapstore, you can install it using sudo apt-get install <application name>.

You can also download Tor, which is a Firefox-like browser. If you're into privacy (I am) it's the browser that MI5 and MI6 use, because it totally conceals your identity. It is much slower than Firefox.