toolbar compacted upon starting Firefox (Linux)

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rpremuz
Posts: 7
Joined: May 12th, 2009, 4:27 am

toolbar compacted upon starting Firefox (Linux)

Post by rpremuz »

Hello!

Sometimes when I start Firefox the toolbar is compacted, i.e. the icons on the right side of the toolbar are hidden and you have to click on >> to see them:
> https://i.postimg.cc/MTT4ghLT/toolbar-compacted.png

I don't know why Firefox compacts the toolbar as the screen size is quite large and there is enough space to show all icons on the toolbar:
> https://i.postimg.cc/MHy1KGMp/toolbar-expanded.png

I am able to restore the expanded toolbar by invoking the Customize action and then just closing the Customize tab. But after a couple of days I find the toolbar compacted again when I start Firefox. (I regularly close Firefox when I do not use it and I regularly shutdown the PC.)

I'd say I first saw this issue in Firefox Quantum.

Is there an option/preference that could force the toolbar to stay expanded?

System info: Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS 64-bit, Firefox 62.0.3.

-- rpr.
Last edited by rpremuz on October 21st, 2018, 1:11 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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jscher2000
Posts: 11742
Joined: December 19th, 2004, 12:26 am
Location: Silicon Valley, CA USA
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Re: toolbar compacted upon starting Firefox (Linux)

Post by jscher2000 »

The lengths of bars are stored in the xulstore.json file in your profile folder. I can't think of a reason for it to become occasionally corrupted/modified for no reason. The other possible explanation is that Firefox isn't reading it exactly the same way at every startup, which would be strange.
rpremuz
Posts: 7
Joined: May 12th, 2009, 4:27 am

Re: toolbar compacted upon starting Firefox (Linux)

Post by rpremuz »

On the same system I'm using Firefox 67 now but still having this issue.

Today when I started Firefox the toolbar was compacted. The following command showed that the xulstore.json file was last changed two days ago:

Code: Select all

ls -l `find ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/ -name xulstore.json`
Then I expanded the toolbar and closed Firefox. At next run of Firefox the toolbar was expanded but the timestamp of xulstore.json file didn't change.

After a couple of additional restarts of Firefox I again got the toolbar compacted while the timestamp of xulstore.json file was still unchanged.

I'd say that there must be something else that causes this issue.

Any suggestion?

-- rpr.
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dickvl
Posts: 54145
Joined: July 18th, 2005, 3:25 am

Re: toolbar compacted upon starting Firefox (Linux)

Post by dickvl »

Try to rename xulstore.json (xulstoreOLD.json) in the Firefox profile folder with Firefox closed to make Firefox create a new file.
See the about:support or the about:profiles page for a button to go to the profile folder.
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therube
Posts: 21703
Joined: March 10th, 2004, 9:59 pm
Location: Maryland USA

Re: toolbar compacted upon starting Firefox (Linux)

Post by therube »

Are you customizing on your end using .css ?

I'm not even seeing how to force an overflow like you're showing?

Are you sure you're not alternating between two Profiles?
(Though opening Customize & having this "fix" itself would pretty much rule that out.)
Fire 750, bring back 250.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110420 SeaMonkey/2.0.14 Pinball CopyURL+ FetchTextURL FlashGot NoScript
rpremuz
Posts: 7
Joined: May 12th, 2009, 4:27 am

Re: toolbar compacted upon starting Firefox (Linux)

Post by rpremuz »

I removed xulstore.json file in the Firefox profile and then started/closed Firefox a couple of times. Each time Firefox was open for at least 30 seconds.

While doing the tests, Firefox had the layout I usually use:
- the Sidebar open on the right side with Bookmarks menu in the Sidebar
- multiple tabs open and retained between sessions (8 tabs open in this testing)
- besides the default History, Sidebar and Firefox Account icons, the Toolbar contains 3 additional icons created by the following extensions: ColorZilla, Tab Auto Refresh and NoScript (in the order shown on picture1)

I didn't change the layout in any way while doing the tests.
  • quit Firefox
    delete xulstore.json

    start Firefox - toolbar is normal (see picture1)
    quit Firefox after 30+ seconds
    xulstore.json has 285 bytes, copied to xulstore1.json

    start Firefox - toolbar is compacted (see picture2)
    quit Firefox after 30+ seconds
    xulstore.json has 274 bytes, copied to xulstore2.json

    start Firefox - toolbar is compacted
    quit Firefox after 30+ seconds
    xulstore.json has 285 bytes, diff says it is the same as xulstore1.json

    start Firefox - toolbar is compacted
    quit Firefox after 30+ seconds
    xulstore.json has 274 bytes, diff says it is the same as xulstore2.json

    start Firefox - toolbar is compacted
    quit Firefox after 30+ seconds
    xulstore.json has 285 bytes, diff says it is the same as xulstore1.json

    start Firefox - toolbar is compacted
    quit Firefox after 30+ seconds
    xulstore.json has 274 bytes, diff says it is the same as xulstore2.json

    start Firefox - toolbar is compacted
As you can see, each time Firefox was closed the content of xulstore.json file alternated between two versions which I loaded to https://countwordsfree.com/jsonviewer to see how they differ:

|-------------------------------- xulstore1.json -------------------------------| |-------------------------------- xulstore2.json -------------------------------|
Image Image

Despite of that change, Firefox behaved the same: it compacted the toolbar after generating xulstore.json for the first time.

I can restore the toolbar by invoking the Customize action and just closing the Customize tab. But after reopening Firefox, the toolbar is compacted again.

-- rpr.
Last edited by rpremuz on June 10th, 2019, 3:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
therube
Posts: 21703
Joined: March 10th, 2004, 9:59 pm
Location: Maryland USA

Re: toolbar compacted upon starting Firefox (Linux)

Post by therube »

(Something about non-ascii names...)

If you remove all the non-default icons, any change?
If you move all the non-default icons - elsewhere (like to the title-bar), any change?

The one is NoScript.
The "pen" & the "C" are ?


---

Nightly does not look to use xulstore.json, instead:

Code: Select all

\FF69\XULSTORE\
    data.mdb
    lock.mdb

---

Are xulstore.json/data.mdb the correct files to be looking at?
Fire 750, bring back 250.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110420 SeaMonkey/2.0.14 Pinball CopyURL+ FetchTextURL FlashGot NoScript
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