cannot permanently disable the add-on bar in FF with nosquint enabled

[ghost]

I've just upgraded to FF 20. When I disable the add-on bar on every restart of FF it pops right back. When nosquint is disabled, everything is fine. Haven't had this issue before. There is a kind of workaround though, it may help you figure out what seems to be the problem. When I disable the option "Show current zoom levels in status bar" in nosquint, only then I can permanently disable the add-on bar with nosquint enabled.

Firefox 20.0 Win 7 x64

Thanks for your help, I hope it will be fixed pretty soon.

[jtackaberry]

Yeah, this was an intentional change. The assumption is that if "show current zoom levels in status bar" is enabled, the user actually wants to see the zoom levels.

The addon bar frequently and mysteriously vanishes and I've been getting a constant stream of emails from users who don't understand what the addon bar is and why they can't see their zoom level anymore.

At this point I need to decide which change is more obnoxious to more users (and to me :)).

Can you help me understand your use-case: if you want to hide the addon bar, why would you also want the show the current zoom levels option enabled?

[ghost]

Thanks for clarifying, I thought it was a bug.

The reason is that I want current zoom levels (and the add-on bar, too) shown sometimes, but not all the time.

Anyway, it's not that big of a deal. Whatever you decide, I for one, will continue using nosquint because it's great.

Thank you and keep up the excellent work!

[jtackaberry]

Thanks :)

I'm willing to change it if it seems to do more harm than good. The goal is to annoy/confuse the least amount of users, on balance. :)

This will be moot for the next major release, which will undergo a UI overhaul. Unfortunately I don't know when that will be ready.

[Joe957]

I have no need for the add on bar. I set my 'NoSquint' and thought I was done. I was confused at first as to what the problem was. But after finding the above I am now annoyed.

I deleted Firefox because of this problem.

[jtackaberry]

@Joe957 You deleted all of Firefox? You could just delete or disable NoSquint.

[Joe957]

Delete and disable will not work. Makes Firefox unusable due to poor eyesight. Will be using IE10 where I can get the zoom feature with the ability to hide status bar.

[jtackaberry]

Ah, ok, I understand. I will update this issue if I change the behaviour. Enjoy IE10.

[sirweldsalot]

i wont lose screen real estate because of this. please let me know if you change it back so that i can use no squint again. addon bar wont stay disabled with the no squint enabled.

[jtackaberry]

For those of you who have disabled NoSquint or even changed browsers, please realize you can disable the "show zoom level in status bar" option and your addon bar will stay hidden. Surely this is better than disabling NoSquint altogether?

[Joe957]

Thank you. Did not realize that this could be done. Back to Firefox :) .

[Hyperoptic]

I hope you don't decide to leave the status (add-on) bar visible.

I went back to Firefox 19.0.2 when the status bar always reappeared, having failed to check the new NoSquint's options, since they hadn't changed before. I discovered they had by finding this web page.

Perhaps this option could be better publicized in the NoSquint description on the add-on page.

Thank you for NoSquint!

[sharonrd]

My personal preference is to have the addon bar invisible by default. When I want to use the 'nosquint zoom level' button, I just toggle the addon bar via a keyboard shortcut, and when I'm done I toggle again so it's invisible again. Maybe to satisfy all users, have a checkbox in the option to keep the status bar on or off by default start-up. And thanks for such a great extension, it's really needed when the pc is hooked up to the TV. :)

[jtackaberry]

I've reverted the change that enabled the addon bar at startup if NoSquint was configured to show zoom levels in the status bar in bb51fd9. I've release 2.1.8 which is currently pending review at AMO but can meanwhile be downloaded at https://www.urandom.ca/nosquint/

My options are to get confused and angry emails and 1 star reviews from users who demand to know why the NoSquint icon has vanished from the bottom of their browser (since Firefox's addon bar visibility status is schizophrenic and impenetrable [at least to me]) or to get irate emails from users who are livid that NoSquint should have the audacity to dictate how their browser is laid out. So, lose-lose for me. But in the absence of an ideal solution, the proper course of action is to do nothing.

A new preference won't really solve the problem, since the users who don't understand what the addon bar is and how to enable it aren't likely to discover a new preference in NoSquint's global settings. Happily, this is moot with the UI changes coming in 3.0, so I'll just live with the complaints caused by the original problem of the mysteriously vanishing addon bar. :)

[bjherbison]

Thank you for fixing this issue in 2.1.8.

Instead of always forcing the icon in the add-on bar, would it be possible to create a widget which can be placed in any bar using the Customize... feature of Firefox? I believe you could place it in the add-on bar by default, but it could be removed by customization, or dragged to another bar (my preference).

I would like to see the icon, but not at the expense of having the add-on bar appear.

[jtackaberry]

Yes, this is part of the UI changes I mentioned coming in 3.0.