What is Reddit's opinion of Mozilla Firefox?

~~There is literally nothing in the release notes…~~

Edit: They have updated the release notes.

√ fixed >Prepare to use SHA-256 signing certificate for Windows builds, to meet new Microsoft signing requirement (1079858)

I guess it's a bug, since you would have an alert from your browser if a website wants acccess to your camera. And theoretically, you wouldn't accept webcam access from PayPal.

NPAPI plug-ins other than Flash and a couple DRM modules. Other than these, the 64-bit builds never supported NPAPI plug-ins. (Examples of plug-ins that were supported in the 32-bit builds in the past but never in the 64-bit Windows build: Java plug-in, Silverlight, Adobe Acrobat.) And until more recently, some extensions could potentially install .DLL files in Firefox but those wouldn't necessarily be compatible with 64-bit builds.

The 64-bit Windows build became available in December 2015, but one would have to go to https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/ (or the beta equivalent) to download the installer for the 64-bit Windows builds. This is because if a 64-bit build installed itself automatically a 32-bit-only feature (such as being able to run the Java plug-in) would cease to work and, at that time, this would be an unwelcome disruption.

Now that the 32-bit builds likewise no longer support NPAPI plug-ins (other than Flash and a couple DRM modules) and no longer support extensions loading .DLL files into Firefox, there is no longer an add-on disparity between the 32-bit builds and 64-bit builds, so this reason for not migrating users to 64-bit builds on 64-bit Windows machines with enough RAM no longer exist.

In my case, I think I had installed the 64-bit build a few months into 2016 (using the above link to pick the platform, language, and 64-bit), and I think when I finally installed Nightly near the end of Nightly 55 the express installed defaulted to a 64-bit build (if I recall correctly). But then I knew I wasn't using one of the add-ons that wasn't supported on the 64-bit platform.

It's so easy to spot people who never tried Nightly

Gecko is now just with 20% slower than Chrome at Speedometer and it is closing in. It does this without any Rust witchcraft which will land soon.

Actually Gecko is the most modern one..... being rewritten in something that wants to be C++ being rewritten (Rust). Gecko the first one that uses parallel styling and the GPU for rendering the DOM.

Gecko is dead! Long live Gecko!

There are a number of differences between the Chrome omnibar and the Firefox awesomebar. Here are some ways to make Firefox's address bar more like Chrome's:

If you want to search from the address bar, you already can. Just type in the address bar and press enter.
If you want just one bar, use "Customize toolbars" to remove the search bar.
If you want the address bar to auto-fill URLs as you type, upgrade to a Firefox 14 beta build.
If you want to use different search engines from the address bar, right-click on a search field (like the one in the Reddit sidebar), and choose "Add a keyword for this search." If add "r" as the search keyword, then you can type "r jazz" in the address bar to search Reddit for "jazz."
If you want to see suggested search queries as you type in the address bar, use an extension like Omnibar.

This works in FirefoxNightly by default. I do not know why it has not landed in stable yet. I love this feature. :)

Nightly is faster but more experimental stuff. I get around 1 crash per month. If that is fine with you maybe you can try it.

Hope this feature lands soon in Firefox stable.

Not certain, but I'm like 62% sure they offer the "old" ESR version by default up until it goes EoL.

If you click the "another language or platform" link you get a page that offers ESR 91.

The release notes for Firefox 91 mention this Mac-specific change: "Firefox now automatically enables High Contrast Mode when "Increase Contrast" is checked on MacOS."

Is it possible you have that setting? If so, you could try turning off Increase Contrast until some better solution is discovered.

It's been around since June 2018, but I don't think Mozilla has done a great job promoting it since then.

Like you might assume they'd link it from the Themes section of AMO or mention it in the "Customize your browser" or "Make Firefox your own" sections of the Firefox Browser product page, but nope.

Proton is the code name for a project that still in development, the results of which currently available in development versions of Firefox. It'll be a part of the stable version of Firefox soon. If you want to try it out now, you can install the Beta, Developer or Nightly versions of Firefox.

This is fixed in Firefox 13 which is currently on the beta channel and will be released next week.

Use uBlock Origin, preferably with JavaScript disabled by default. It takes a moment to build up your personal ruleset, but it pays off. Eg. I never see any ads on independent.co.uk (JS is disabled and I have most of the default filters for uBlock active).

As an additional tip: before you enable JS, try using the reader view of a browser like Firefox.

You tried in a fresh profile without any modifications or addons and it still didn't work?? Oof. I'd recommend reinstalling the browser.

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/

(this won't affect your profile data, like bookmarks, history, etc)

I think it's a little early to decide.

The Extended Support Release of Firefox 52 is scheduled to get security updates through mid-May 2018, so that provides an alternative to the regular releases.

By Spring 2018, I expect that alternate browsers that are working well will have received plenty of coverage. So it appears you can wait, unless you prefer to be one of the "pioneers."

ESR: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/organizations/faq/

What version are you on?

Please go to about:support and paste the line for "Multiprocess Windows". It is likely you're experiencing an issue related to multiprocess.

If it is enabled, please consider switching to Beta temporarily (until it graduates to release) as the many of the necessary fixes have already landed there.

If you are not willing to do this it is possible to disable multiprocess mode. But please try enabling it again after the next release as the feature (when working correctly) should be beneficial (both for responsiveness and eventually security).

To disable multiprocess go to about:config in your location bar. Search for browser.tabs.remote.autostart. There may be multiple results. Set them all to false and restart the browser.

Please report back your results. I think Beta should fix it and that could be helpful for developers to know if it does or if there's some other issue which they are not aware of (that is, you're helping to make the browser better for others this way).

Instead of using an outdated browser with known security issues, you should use Firefox ESR: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/enterprise/

That way, you can avoid proton design until 2 of November (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/Calendar) without compromising your security

The last version of Firefox for Mac OS 10.11 is the Extended Support Release of Firefox 78, which is pretty close to retirement. You can still get it from the following page -- make sure to choose 78.15.0esr and not the newer one.

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/#product-desktop-esr

See: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/how-download-and-install-firefox-mac

> … the company only upgrade from certain time and tests with our web software or if there is something very critical concerning the safety.

If this is the sort of policy your IT organization makes, I’d look for new employment. They are a ticking time bomb, waiting to blow up and take your employer down with them.

Send your IT this link and point out “We are aware of targeted attacks in the wild abusing this flaw.” and the fact that it was posted and fixed 17 months ago:

https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2020-11/

Firefox 72 is vulnerable to both those critical flaws.

It doesn’t stop there. Firefox 72 is vulnerable to most if not all of the attacks fixed in subsequent versions:

https://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox/

If your company wants to stick to one major version of Firefox for a while, they need to switch to the ESR branch, and they still need to apply it’s security patches as soon as they’re released:

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/enterprise/

Yes; in fact since Firefox is mostly cross-platform code, much of the performance work on mobile Firefox directly benefits desktop Firefox. And aside from that, there are a huge number of people at Mozilla currently working on performance and efficiency. Desktop Firefox has been lowering its memory usage dramatically with each recent release, and Firefox 13 was the slimmest browser in Lifehacker's recent comparison.

Firefox 15 on the Aurora channel has even better memory usage and snappiness, thanks in part to preventing a common way that add-on code used to leak memory.

Assuming you are on Linux.

Those incredibly annoying forced update dialogs are caused by your Linux package manager updating Firefox out from underneath it. Firefox will most likely crash randomly if it were to start a new process using the new and old versions at the same time. The forced restart allows you to orderly complete existing work and restart Firefox.

You can use the Mozilla build or the Flatpack/Snap versions to avoid this problem.

cc /u/gonza_11

You can! I'd suggest following up in the Enterprise list for specifics though. https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/organizations/ Feel free to join the relevant mailing list for your locale, and then e-mail that list with a full list of what you want to do. The helpful folks there can walk you through a deployment.

> Will they disable the about:config preference to be able to run legacy extensions?

I don't think there are any plans to remove the about:config page. What made you think that they will?

There will be a flag to enable legacy extensions in Nightly and DevEdition, even in v57. But if you flip that switch, lots of things might break in crazy ways since there will be a lot of changes and the old API might not work as it used to work. There is no mention on when there will be a removal of this option.

Why stick with Nightly if you really want legacy addons? Switch to Firefox ESR. It will work until June 2018 with legacy addons.

Did you download the full installer from https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release (about 53MB in size) or did you download the stub installer (about 327K in size)? The full installer gives you more options than the stub installer.

> This should be the Firefox(.)com page because the current https://firefox.com is terrible.

Are you blocking redirects? I never seen firefox.com, I'm sent via 301 redirect to:

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/?redirect_source=firefox-com

> I expect that FF will also block ad-blockers,

I doubt it. There's this, published a few months ago:

How to block annoying ads using an ad blocker — Mozilla

– and so on.

firefox developer edition and nightly versions allow you to disable the signed addon requirement by disabling xpinstall.signatures.required in about config: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/channel/desktop/

i'm not aware of any unsigned addons though, since this was required since ~3 years ago already

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/organizations/

"Maintenance of each ESR, through point releases, is limited to high-risk/high-impact security vulnerabilities and in rare cases may also include off-schedule releases that address live security vulnerabilities. Backports of any functional enhancements and/or stability fixes are not in scope."

And then, read through

https://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox/ and compare it with https://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox-esr/

to see the security fixes that do not get included with ESR

On top of security, ESR doesn't get stability updates.

You can even read it straight from the first link I referenced:

" Who should use Mozilla Firefox ESR?

Mozilla Firefox ESR is meant for organizations that manage their client desktops, including schools, businesses and other institutions that want to offer Firefox. Users who want to get the latest features, performance enhancements and technologies in their browsing experience should download Firefox for personal use, as these improvements will only be available to ESR users several development cycles after being made available in Firefox for desktop. If you’re using Firefox for personal use, you can download Firefox from mozilla.org/firefox.

In some cases, ESR is proposed to regular users for unsupported architectures transition. For example, when Windows XP support ended for the release, Firefox ESR has been recommended for these users."

Other than edge cases (like an OS that is no longer supported) ESR is NOT for home use, but only for mass deployments.

> I've been clicking Dismiss for ~3 months now...

Then here's where you can see aaaaaall the important security holes you've been ignoring for ~3 months:

https://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox/

Keep in mind that that list gets longer (and thus scarier) every ~4 weeks and will continue to do so forever. You were more vulnerable yesterday than the day before, and if you revert then you will be more vulnerable tomorrow than you were yesterday.

If you just don't like change in general, then switch to Firefox ESR and you'll only get a new major release about once a year (with security-only updates every ~4 weeks):

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/enterprise/

Bear in mind, though, that Firefox ESR 78 only has about 3 weeks of life left and Firefox ESR 91 has the new Proton UI. You won't see additional changes for about another year, but time has just about run out for the old UI in supported, secure versions of Firefox.

If you specifically don't like the new Proton UI, then /r/FirefoxCSS has resources for you.

Chief among them is Lepton, which mostly re-implements the old Photon UI that you seem to be trying to stick with on top of up-to-date Firefox releases:

https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix

If you don't want to have to update your CSS hacks from time to time when Mozilla makes UI changes, then switch to Firefox ESR and you'll only need to update them about once a year. You'll have to wait a year for new features and improvements, but in exchange you'll have a very consistent browser experience in between each major release.

If Firefox 70 worked better previously and doesn't today, it points to the website changing, or something else on your machine changing (like driver updates).

I'd treat this as a new issue, unless you have a known working setup that you can test with. It doesn't sound like you do.

Question - does Firefox Nightly work better? https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/channel/desktop/#nightly

Are you on MacOS, Windows, or Linux?

The release notes for Firefox 91 mention this Mac-specific change: "Firefox now automatically enables High Contrast Mode when "Increase Contrast" is checked on MacOS."

Is it possible you have that setting?

If so, you could try turning off Increase Contrast.

You also could try disabling High Contrast in Firefox: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/disable-high-contrast-mode-firefox

According to the Firefox 78.0 release notes:

> A number of accessibility improvements have been made with this release.

> * Text input controls with custom styling now correctly show the focus outline when appropriate.

Before the update, the box outline color was only changed if the site had not customized the appearance of the input. The update adds the -moz-focusring to the boxes that were missed before.

No idea whether that can be overridden in userContent.css or userChrome.css.

Dark mode for in content pages is available in Firefox beta. This also fixes the "flash" effect that a lot of people don't like while pages are loading.

Install Firefox beta
Visit about:config and set browser.in-content.dark-mode to true
Make sure you are using dark mode in your OS - if you are not using dark mode in your OS, you can try setting ui.systemUsesDarkTheme to 1 - this may stop working in the future.
Restart Firefox.

67.0: May 21
67.0.1: June 4
67.0.2: June 11

Hardly "twice a week".

One of the features of Firefox 63 highlighted in the Release Notes is "Firefox theme now matches the Windows 10 OS Dark and Light modes" ( https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/63.0/releasenotes/ ). Could that be the problem?

You could try changing from the Default theme to the Light theme and see whether that makes any difference. https://support.mozilla.org/kb/built-themes-firefox-alternative-complete-themes

There's also this optional hidden preference I haven't tried (since I don't run Windows 10): https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1238612#answer-1168040

> The add-on toolbar was removed with Firefox 57 (Quantum)

No, the add-on bar was removed all the way back in Firefox 29. In Firefox 57, it's add-ons with their own toolbars that no longer work until bug 1215064 is fixed.

You absolutely shouldn't:

https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2017-24/#CVE-2017-7828

That is a critical vulnerability in Firefox 56, and Firefox 56 will not be patched.

If you need to hold on to some legacy extensions for a while, switch to Firefox 52ESR, which will get security patches until early July 2018:

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/organizations/

Maybe you could send a one or two sentence testimonial based on your own experience and add a link to the Quantum page: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/quantum/

That is likely to seem more genuine to the recipients than something "canned."

update flash (remember to uncheck the macaffee bullshit)
see if the problem persists on a newer version like firefox beta
use flashblock as a workaround to only enable the flash elements you want to see, so sites won't freeze up per default anymore, just because there's some flash on it.

> No I don't get the marks on the scroll bar. :(

Oh, apparently they only appear if you click the Highlight All button/checkbox (I hadn't realized that, but see it in the release notes).

The release notes for Firefox 91 mention this Mac-specific change: "Firefox now automatically enables High Contrast Mode when "Increase Contrast" is checked on MacOS." Is it possible you have that setting?

This change was introduced in Firefox 83, but there was a temporary preference many users toggled to delay it from taking effect. That temporary preference is no longer effective.

The design is:

Click to select a search target and then type your query and submit (Enter or click the Go button)
To submit the current address bar contents immediately, Shift+click the button

Ref. https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/83.0/releasenotes/

There is a hack-around in another thread that I have not tried myself:

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ls0ffy/oneoffsrefresh_redux_single_click_search_icons_in/

Per the Release Notes, you can shift+click a search engine icon to access the old behavior of immediately submitting the contents of the address bar to that site. https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/83.0/releasenotes/

> First off whenever I type "amazon.com" into the search bar, i get a prompt to search within amazon.

I don't see this, but it could be because I removed Amazon from the One-Click Search Engines / Search Shortcuts box on the Options/Preferences page.

> Secondly, when I try to search with an engine other than what I set as the default I have to click the engine, then hit enter now.

Per the Release Notes, you can shift+click a search engine icon to access the old behavior of immediately submitting the contents of the address bar to that site. https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/83.0/releasenotes/

>You can't just turn them off anymore, the only option is "Check for updates but let you choose to install them" which will still display a pop-up.

Yes you can -- https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/blob/master/README.md#appautoupdate

but you should really just keep auto update enabled and install ESR instead: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/enterprise/

You could also try kiosk mode: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/firefox-enterprise-kiosk-mode especially to use private mode and autostart a certain URL (obviates the need to disable sessionrestore from crash).

You can downlad it it here: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/channel/desktop/

Just un-archive and put it somewhere. Launch the firefox binary either by double clicking on it, or from a terminal - or you can make a launcher file: https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2018/01/22/335/

Can you post a screenshot of what you see when it breaks?

What happens if you set gfx.webrender.force-disabled to true in about:config and restart Firefox?

Does it still happen?

Does it happen in Firefox Nightly? https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/channel/desktop/#desktop-nightly-download

Dark mode for in content pages is available in Firefox beta. This also fixes the "flash" effect that a lot of people don't like while pages are loading.

Install Firefox beta
Visit about:config and set browser.in-content.dark-mode to true
Make sure you are using dark mode in your OS - if you are not using dark mode in your OS, you can try setting ui.systemUsesDarkTheme to 1 - this may stop working in the future.
Restart Firefox.

¡Hola! Per https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/66.0.4/releasenotes/ there are still a few corner cases being worked on at the moment, but the update ought to fix most of the Firefox out there. Please file up follow up bugs to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=armagadd-on-2.0 if you're still seeing issues, follow https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/QA/Bug_writing_guidelines while doing so. ¡Gracias!

I agree with this - purely because I believe it's healthy to have more than one rendering engine out on the web - and if you're not using Firefox / Waterfox / Tor Browser, then you are using a flavour of Chromium.

But, if you really don't like Firefox then stick with Vivaldi and support the Norwegians.

hm, the known issue would be a completely blank new tab page like here: https://bug1471375.bmoattachments.org/attachment.cgi?id=8987978 perhaps what you're seeing is the same issue in different form though. would you mind testing this in 62.0b5 which already has the fix for the original issue: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/beta/all/

There's no way around it with the current localization infrastructure: language packs are strictly compatible with only one version of Firefox. A broken language pack, e.g. missing strings, can break the UI and give you a YSOD (Yellow Screen of Death).

Unless there are good technical/security reasons, I would simply use an official fully localized build from Mozilla. https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/beta/all/

Perhaps you haven't tried more recent versions of Firefox. Firefox 13 (desktop) was #1 in Lifehacker's browser comparison from this month, and far less memory than all other browsers under every workload they tested. It also fared the best in several of Tom's Hardware's browser shootouts this year. But most importantly, the latest version -- even more so if you are using Firefox 15 builds from the Aurora channel -- are extremely fast and efficient in everyday, real-world browsing.

Last step - and this one may be a bit annoying - but can you try to reproduce this problem in Firefox Nightly?

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/channel/desktop/#nightly

Is it any better? Same? Either way, post the about:support for Nightly as well.

Easiest thing to try first would be a different browser. This will rule in/out the browser as the source of the problems.

Try FireFox as the code base is different than Chrome, so it'll be a good contrasting test.

Link: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/windows/

Failing that, try turning off the firewall and disabling TotalAV and test. If the test is successful then one of those is causing the issue. If not re-enable them so you are again protected.

Reminder that Firefox is a great web browser that isn't built on big advertiser code (Google Chromium) and has the best ad blocker available to it.

There's also a solid community on reddit catering to it over at /r/firefox

Just a small step you can take if this doesn't go anywhere.

Reminder that Firefox is a great web browser that isn't built on big advertiser code (Google Chromium) and has the best ad blocker available to it.

There's also a solid community on reddit catering to it over at /r/firefox

Just a small step you can take if this doesn't go anywhere.

Firefox is one of the only non-Chromium based browsers left on Windows and has different performance characteristics than them. It also has a lot of really good features like really good performance under massive tab loads (you'll feel right at home with 64GB of RAM), containers, a sidebar (that can be used by extensions), end to end encrypted syncing, and a modern interface.

Give it a shot: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/

See https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/releases/

Quick selection:

better battery life when watching video in macOS
automated updates on Windows
better WebGL performance on Linux
Fission
PDF form filling improvements
tab unloading on low memory in Windows
image color profile support in macOS
Windows SSO support
overscroll on macOS
native context menus in macOS
WebRender
pinch zooming on Linux
tick marks on scrollbar on find in page results
multiple picture in picture for videos

Nightly is the work-in-progress channel. The Nightly version number going up signals the start of work on a new Firefox version, not the release of one.

Work on what will become Firefox 96 only started on November 1, and it will continue until about December 2. We're ~4 days in to about 31 days of changes and improvements.

I should also point out that you're looking at (work-in-progress) release notes, not a changelog. They don't ever list every closed bug or feature in the release notes, only big-ticket items seen as worth announcing.

From what I've seen in the past, it looks like people who manage the release notes typically don't spend a lot of time and effort on them for Nightly, especially at the start of a release (as we are now). Lots of changes get checked in, then backed out because of regressions. Other changes will be switched on for Nightly with the understanding that they are too rough to "ride the trains" and thus will not move on to the Beta release and/or the mainline release.

You can see this play out in old release notes for completed versions of Firefox. As an example, Firefox 93 Nightly release notes only bothered to list one update, while the Firefox 93 Beta release notes shows 8 of them, and then the final Firefox 93 release notes lists like 12 of them.

What OS are you on?

If Windows, Firefox will already unload entire unused tabs when the system runs low on memory.

If Mac, it looks like that may be coming soon-ish (they've been gathering new system memory telemetry data for the past release or two).

For Linux, last time I looked and within the limits of my understanding it appears to still be very much a work-in-progress. If I read things correctly, measuring available system memory on Linux is a lot more complicated than on the other platforms.

For Windows users, that feature was released last week in Firefox 93:

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/93.0/releasenotes/#note-788794

Mac and Linux users will have to wait a bit longer. It looks like some enabling work for Macs was included in Firefox 92 while the equivalent is still a work-in-progress for Linux, so I'd guess Mac users will get this feature next.

Anyone interested can follow the bugs I linked, but remember:

Bugzilla is Mozilla's ticket tracking system, so unless you are actually working on a bug (writing code, confirming steps to reproduce, etc.) do not comment. It's a tool for engineers, not a user feedback channel or for posting "Me too!" like some brain-dead AOLer.

You can have multiple regular Firefox installs too.

When you use the (installer)[https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all] choose custom and change the installation folder, and untick all of the the create icons options (they would replace existing ones).

You can navigate to the new install folder and right click the firefox.exe, "Send to", "Desktop (create shortcut)" to get a separate icon.

It makes a new profile in the usual place when run, see about:profiles.

Although firefox_portable might be an easier option as (YeetCacti says)[https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/pgn8n2/compartmentalization_with_multiple_different/hbcjirm/].

The release notes for Firefox 91 mention this Mac-specific change: "Firefox now automatically enables High Contrast Mode when "Increase Contrast" is checked on MacOS." Is it possible you have that setting?

> What I noticed tho was that Firefox was not releasing memory even when I closed the tabs. The memory management was subpar and used more ram than Chrome

It should have eventually cleared the memory, but that can take some time. Fission ought to solve this issue for the long term, and it is enabled on Nightly today. You may want to give that a shot to see if that helps things for you: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/channel/desktop/#nightly

If it's available on Edge, then it's probably fine. If not, then your answer is obvious.

That said, you should probably be using a free browser like Firefox. (Not that it'd necessarily protect you from MS spyware, but saying "no" even once helps, and FF is more feature-rich.)

Remove all copies of Firefox and install it again with a fresh download from https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/

If your data doesn't come up after you start it up, go to about:profiles, find the one that has your data, and click the Set as Default Profile button underneath it.

You can use Shift+Click for "submit now." (Firefox 83 Release Notes)

Some users are adding the classic search bar as a workaround: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/add-search-bar-firefox-toolbar

Some users have posted about an Autoconfig (startup script) approach in other threads.

Did you try reinstalling Firefox? No need to uninstall or delete files, the installer will detect it as a in-place upgrade. You can get a full installer from: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release

Did you get any error messages mentioning VCRUNTIME140_1.DLL?

Did you reinstall the VC Runtime files from this page:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads-2647da03-1eea-4433-9aff-95f26a218cc0

I downloaded and ran both the 32-bit and 64-bit installers in the first section of that article ("Visual Studio 2015, 2017 and 2019"). Then I restarted Windows and all was normal again. (I don't know whether 64-bit users need the 32-bit install, but Windows didn't object when I ran it (I ran it first, then 64-bit second).)

Manjaro probably has newer libraries than Kubuntu does, and you may be running into a bug that exhibits itself on older library versions.

You have a couple of options here:

try the Snap version
try the Mozilla version - https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/
report a bug using ubuntu-bug firefox
report a bug upstream: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi

There's another option. You can install the long-term support version of Firefox (Firefox ESR) which for now still has this support in place.

The idea behind this design is that you can select an alternate search engine first and that enables getting suggestions from that source (and not sending any keystrokes to your default search engine for that query).

Not useful? As described in the Firefox 83 Release Notes, you can Shift+Click the search engine's button to submit the contents of the address bar to that search engine immediately (the old behavior).

Don't want to hold Shift? There's a temporary preference (not sure when it will be removed):

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste update2 and pause while the list is filtered

Firefox should list all the preferences associated with the current wave of innovations.

(3) Double-click the browser.urlbar.update2.oneOffsRefresh preference to switch the value from true to false

(4) If you do not want buttons to focus searches in bookmarks, history, or open tabs, double-click the browser.urlbar.update2.localOneOffs preference to switch the value from true to false