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Un-hide the ‘http://’ in Firefox 7

The recent release of Firefox 7 has brought with it several changes. One of these, is that Firefox hides the ‘http://’ prefix in the URL bar by default.

For many people this is fine and probably a positive changes, but geeks like myself may wish to restore the prefix. (I found it especially annoying when I copied a URL from the bar and the text pasted did include the ‘http://’, when the text I copied did not! I don’t like that kind of inconsistency!)

To restore the prefix, browse to about:config. Accept the warning, then search for browser.urlbar.trimURLs. When you find the setting, double-click on it to toggle it to false. The changes should take effect immediately.

Screenshot showing about:config in Firefox, with the browser.urlbar.trimURLs key shown

That’s better!

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17 Comments

  1. Martel wrote:

    Thank you! It was driving me crazy as well.

    Sunday, October 2, 2011 at 18:36 | Permalink |
  2. CDKR wrote:

    Thanks!
    Another stupid decision by mozzarella

    Monday, October 3, 2011 at 17:40 | Permalink |
  3. D wrote:

    Thanks so much for this! This was always one of the things I liked least about Chrome, and I was disappointed to see FF follow in its footsteps. At least they provide a way to change it back though.

    Monday, October 3, 2011 at 20:40 | Permalink |
  4. Thankyou wrote:

    I uninstalled chrome because their evil upgrade agent, and the url functionality pissed me.

    Now mozilla seems to be copying all those annoying traits, catering for the masses.

    Soon they’ll open up an app store.

    Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 04:54 | Permalink |
  5. BeMore wrote:

    Thank you. That was driving me mad.

    Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 16:12 | Permalink |
  6. marlo wrote:

    Thank You!

    Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 17:22 | Permalink |
  7. tha catcher wrote:

    Thank you very much good sir

    Friday, October 14, 2011 at 05:08 | Permalink |
  8. Mazzulatore wrote:

    Thanks, posts like this let me solve problems in SECONDS.

    Friday, October 14, 2011 at 09:25 | Permalink |
  9. Steve wrote:

    Thanks so much!!! This saves me so much time!

    Friday, October 14, 2011 at 14:50 | Permalink |
  10. Evandro wrote:

    Thanks!

    That was supposed to be in the main options!

    So incovenient. It is so no user friendly for nerds!

    Sunday, October 16, 2011 at 11:45 | Permalink |
  11. Thanks wrote:

    http:// should appear by default… Thanks a lot! 🙂

    Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 03:02 | Permalink |
  12. mo wrote:

    Thansk for the hint. Opera solved this problem much more user (non-nerd & nerd) friendly. They hide http// (and other stuff) by default, but when you click into the address bar you see the whole link.

    Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 12:37 | Permalink |
  13. Teresa wrote:

    I have wanting to go look up the change for this then I’d get busy and forget. Heard you talking about it on Not Another Mac Podcast and finally got it changed. Thanks!

    Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 18:12 | Permalink |
  14. NetUser wrote:

    Thank you!

    Oh how much I hate MS IE.

    So I use FF.

    And FF put this stupid thing in.

    So I switched back to MS IE.

    Now with your tip…

    I am using FF again.

    Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 20:40 | Permalink |
  15. Martin wrote:

    Nice one, thanks. Another one of those “improvements” that becomes an annoyance.

    Sunday, February 12, 2012 at 00:43 | Permalink |
  16. Ray Rae wrote:

    Two thumbs up, Peter!
    I understand this irreversible tendency for software to be more “granny-friendly”, but I’m really pissed off when we (power users and geeks) lose flexibility and functionality we care about… unless there is an option seomewhere to bring it back. Fortunalely, it is the case here!!!

    Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 04:44 | Permalink |
  17. R Soul wrote:

    Thanks for the tip. I found the ‘feature’ particularly annoying when posting URLs in forum replies. I tend to forget url tags because the forum can parse the links, but only if they start with http or www. When FF hid the http, URLs like “peter.upfold.org.uk” would not get parsed.

    Sunday, May 6, 2012 at 23:51 | Permalink |

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