Firefox: display the bookmarks toolbar only on the New Tab Page

[harlan4096]

Mozilla added a new feature to the Firefox Nightly version of the web browser that lets users display the browser's Bookmarks Toolbar only on the New Tab Page, if wanted.

The Bookmarks Toolbar is a long-standing feature of the Firefox web browser (in fact most browsers). It is a special toolbar that displays bookmarks to the user on the browser's frontend when it is enabled.

Firefox supports displaying folders and individual bookmarks, and users have options to display the toolbar permanently in the browser or access bookmarks from the Menu Bar (hidden by default), the Bookmarks library, or keywords.

Keywords may require a bit of explaining as the functionality has been hidden deeply in Firefox by Mozilla. Similar to assigning keywords to search engines to run searches from the address bar using these keywords, keywords assigned to bookmarks allow users to load the sites by typing the keyword in the browser's address bar and hitting Enter.

Tip: if you have a lot of bookmarks, check out Bookmarks Organizer, as it helps you manage bookmarks in the browser.

The display of the Bookmarks Toolbar in the browser takes away vertical space; while it is useful for some users as they get faster access to their bookmarks, it is problematic because of the space that it occupies in the browser window.

Mozilla added an option to Firefox Nightly, currently at version 84, to show the Bookmarks Toolbar only on the New Tab Page of the browser. If activated, Firefox will hide the Bookmarks Toolbar when sites get loaded, but will display it when the user opens a New Tab Page in Firefox.

One of the ideas around the introduction of the option may be that most users open new sites from the New Tab Page, and not from active sites loaded in the browser. Since it is optional, it does not take away anything from users who prefer to display the Bookmarks Toolbar all the time in the browser, and those who prefer to hide it.

The change leads to an interesting question: how many browser users are still using bookmarks? My personal use of bookmarks has slowed down considerable in recent years. While I still use a set of bookmarks and add the occasional site to the bookmarks, I find myself using them less and less when I'm using web browsers.

Firefox Nightly is currently at version 84. It takes two major releases to get Firefox Stable to catch up to Nightly to get the feature.  Firefox 84 Stable is scheduled to be released on December 15, 2020.

Now You: Do you use Bookmarks and the Bookmarks Toolbar?
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