topic Re: Feedback on the new sidebar design in Discussions

Feedback on the new sidebar design

BButter — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 15:08:46 GMT

The new panel that appears when opening history has been given a new look. Now I don't mind the new Nova changes too much. Do I prefer them? Absolutely not, but if they are ever forced to be enabled I'll live with it. On the other hand the changes to the UI here are not just visual they are removing a large amount of functionality that I previously relied on in this browser.

Previously when the history panel was set to sort by date it would group items into categories based on what day or month that website was visited. The new panel still does this but with one major change, you can no longer right-click on the groups, only the individual items. It is no longer possible to remove a specific group of history items easily. A workaround to this is to select the first item in the group and hold shift while selecting the last item. But depending on the group this could be years worth of history items to scroll through in order to do this. Also, I've had mixed results with whether clicking a history items selects it or opens it in the current tab.

On a fundamental level this is making the browser less intuitive to use. I don't mind the visual changes but this is NOT a visual change and it has severely impacted my workflow.

Re: Feedback on the new sidebar design

Agentvirtuel — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 16:48:48 GMT

Bonsoir

157.0 https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/157.0/releasenotes

While we continue to refine the new design, the previous sidebar version can still be restored by setting sidebar.revamp to false in about:config. This also turns off vertical tabs. The preference will remain available until the end of 2027.

You can try
1 - Go to configuration editor https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-config-editor-firefox
2 - Enter a search term sidebar.revamp
You can double-click on the preference, to set its value to false

Re: Feedback on the new sidebar design

BButter — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 17:30:56 GMT

Wonderful, thank you. I only hope that this config option is not removed in future versions. I really appreciate your response though.

Re: Feedback on the new sidebar design

GoSsayn — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 17:59:46 GMT

Hi, I've been using Firefox and Thunderbird ever since those two programs were released. I also used to have the Mosaic browser—I'm a bit older, after all. And I've made donations from time to time.
But I guess that's it now—no more using them or donating.
Because I HATE the tab bar above the address bar! And I can't turn it off anymore.

It’s a real shame—another project will be happy to have me and my money!
It’s a shame you’ve become so arrogant!

Re: Feedback on the new sidebar design

Agentvirtuel — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 18:26:08 GMT

Bonsoir

The tab bar above the address bar.

Tabs at the bottom, is it your question?
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/please-please-allow-us-to-place-the-tabs-at-the-bottom/idi-p/216

Tabs moved to top again, do not want?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1608407