I've used Firefox for probably 20 years and, until recently, I've always been able to open a new window/tab, click in the url bar, and immediately select from a list of my most visited URLs. Some number of months ago, that went away and, instead of getting a history of my most visited URLs (something I found extremely useful when returning to my most oft-visited sites), now I get Firefox Suggests. What more, I have to start typing before it will bring up anything.
So, before, I could get to my most common sites with 3 clicks: new window/tab, click the url bar, select my site. Now, I have to 1) open a new window/tab, 2) click the url bar, 3) switch to keyboard input and type a few letters, 4) look through suggestions that SOMETIMES contain what I'm looking for, 5) potentially have to partially complete and then type more, and then finally 6) select the site that I want IF it even pops up by that point.
I'm tired of technology trying to predict me. I find predictive suggestions gimmicky and useless and it always feels like the technology is trying to steer me in certain directions (especially Google). What was wrong with just showing a list of the most visited URLs?? Why get rid of that?? Humans are creatures of habit and more often than not, a list of your top visited URLs will be the best predictor of what you're looking to go to anyway.
Maybe some users like Firefox Suggests. That's fine, keep it as a feature. But, at least make it configurable how my url bar behaves and let me have my historical list of most-visited URLs back right when it gets the focus. I found this infinitely more useful than Firefox Suggests. I find myself more and more having to just type out URLs like it's the 90s again. This introduces so much inconvenience into my web browsing that I may just switch browsers to one that still gives me that history.
