Remove Sidebar

[25233Guyver]

Your question

I am not a fan of the sidebar opening on browser start up and I cannot find out how to disable it.

Addon & CoApp version and details

version: 9.0.2.3
target: mozilla
channel: stable
lang: en-US
coapp: {"found":true,"path":"C:\Program Files\DownloadHelper CoApp\vdhcoapp.exe","version":"2.0.19","new_version":false}
license: {"accepted":true,"email":"","key":"fec46c9d79184b3a"}
platform: x86-64 win
UA: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:126.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/126.0
{
"valid_license_message_has_been_displayed": true,
"used_sidebar_button": true,
"used_popup_button": true,
"download_directory": "C:\Users\Zenme\Desktop",
"last_download_directory": {
"__serializer_tag": "option_some",
"__serializer_value": {
"__serializer_tag": "primitive",
"__serializer_value": "C:\Users\Zenme\Desktop"
}
},
"theme": "dark",
"view_options": {
"all_tabs": false,
"low_quality": false,
"sort_by_status": true,
"sort_reverse": false,
"show_button_clean": true,
"show_button_clean_all": false,
"show_button_convert_local": false,
"hide_downloaded": false
},
"use_sidebar": false,
"open_count_store": 5,
"successfull_dl": 3
}

[rihntintin]

My sidebar is on the right side of the browser. At the bottom of the sidebar are 3 icons. Click on the middle icon. Done.

[25233Guyver]

I am using Windows embedded as well, so we can rule that out I think.

[paulrouget]

So far that actually hasn't worked for me. Every time I open up Firefox for the day, it's always there at start. Clicking on it will hide it, but the setting never seems to change.

This only happens on Firefox startup, correct?

I am pretty sure that a Firefox bug. I have talked to them about this, and iirc, they wrote the patch, but it hasn't been fixed in Firefox yet: https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D208352

[GrampaWildWilly]

That's weird. A bug in Firefox? How come @25233Guyver is seeing the problem but I'm not?

[25233Guyver]

Alrighty, found the problem.

Me.

After restarting my computer about seven times and such, that's when I realized I was looking for the settings I was activating the side bar to get there and repeatedly didn't click to hide. Huzzah, user idiocy.

[GrampaWildWilly]

Been there done that. 😃

[Eldon-Tyrell]

I have the exact same problem (see #952 (comment))

and cannot fix it.

@25233Guyver

. . . I was activating the side bar to get there and repeatedly didn't click to hide. . .

I don't quite get that - could you describe step by step what i have to do exactly to solve this ?

[25233Guyver]

Clicking this, and not looking for it anywhere else, will keep it to the toolbar.

[Eldon-Tyrell]

ah yes but that doesn't solve the problem of the bookmark-sidebar always being open on Firefox-start. - i thought you had a solution

[25233Guyver]

That was the solution actually. My dumbass was opening it again over and over in the side. It stopped as soon as I didn't try to click anything after that. On Tuesday, July 2, 2024 at 09:59:07 AM PDT, GrampaWildWilly ***@***.***> wrote: I thought maybe you were unknowingly opening Firefox with a switch that might be causing your problem. I've just done a web search & found this: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/CommandLineOptions. I thought maybe there was a switch for launching the browser with a particular sidebar. There doesn't seem to be such a switch. This appears to be an older version of the same information: https://www-archive.mozilla.org/docs/command-line-args. There's no switch for sidebar in there, either. This is quite baffling. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Eldon-Tyrell]

i cannot follow you - please bear with me.

my problem: since I used the new VDH-UI once, my Firefox is in this state:

• my firefox shows the bookmark sidebar now.
• i close the sidebar by clicking the 'X'
• I close Firefox
• I start Firefox again
• the Bookmark-sidebar is there at Firefox start

always
no matter what was there when closing Firefox (history, Bookmarks, VDH)
no matter if VDH is set to new or old UI
no matter if VDH is set to using the sidebar or pop-up

I tried all combinations and orders I can imagine.

[GrampaWildWilly]

Of course, as soon as I mention it, it starts acting up. This happens every so often. I'm clicking my images & they are not opening in a new window. The new window opens but it stays blank. I don't know why GitHub does this. I can't even do an Open Image in New Tab. I can copy/paste the image into my image viewer application. That lets me magnify the images. This is so frustrating. Sometimes GitHub works properly, sometimes it doesn't. If you come back in a few hours, you will be able to click an image & get it to open in a new window. Consistency. Where is it when you most need it?

[GrampaWildWilly]

Wait. You're right. The sidebar control on the toolbar has a popup context menu that talks about the bookmarks toolbar. That's weird. Why wouldn't it talk about sidebar properties? It's a sidebar control. It should talk about sidebar properties. OK. It's completely weird. I don't have a solution after all.

[GrampaWildWilly]

Every button on the toolbar has a popup context menu with a bookmarks entry. Every button. What's up with that? The bookmarks aren't any more important than anything else. Why isn't there also a sidebar entry on every popup context menu? This is ridiculous.

[GrampaWildWilly]

On the other hand, I found that customizing the toolbar to add the sidebar button & then clicking the added button did successfully toggle a sidebar -- whichever one I most recently selected -- open & closed. Maybe if you use that button to close your sidebar, your next Firefox session won't have the sidebar. Maybe. I find it totally weird that I'm not seeing this problem. You'd think if there were a bug in Firefox, everybody would experience it. Isn't software supposed to be deterministic?

[GrampaWildWilly]

Maybe it will make a difference if you switch from bookmarks to history, then toggle that closed via the sidebar button, not the X, before you shut down. Maybe switch to the VDH sidebar, then don't click the sidebar control on the toolbar but click the Show in popup button instead. Have you already tried these? I'm losing track.

[Eldon-Tyrell]

worth a try - but i have tried that and all other combinations in every order for quite some time

thanks anyway - I couldn't imagine how anyone could try to be more helpful than you here !

[GrampaWildWilly]

I'm trying but I'm not succeeding. Maybe this is the bug that Paul mentioned upthread here on 2024/6/8. I read the discussion over on phabricator & I admit I didn't follow it at all. But I trust Paul. So we can only hope a future revision of Firefox, one that appears soon, will fix your problem.

[ThomasBecker42]

I have the same problem, no matter if I close the sidebar with the "x" or by the video-downloadhelper icon, after closing Firefox and opening it again, the side bar is open.
Firefiox 127.0.2 (64-Bit)
Version 9.0.2.12 (stable), target mozilla, locale de.

[GrampaWildWilly]

I have just added a comment to #1192 that is relevant here.

[caddytan]

This is how I resolve this issue on my Mac.

In Firefox, go to Help --> More Troubleshooting Information
Scroll down to Profile Folder and click on Show In Finder. It will bring up Finder in the Profiles folder
Quit Firefox
In the profiles folder, delete xulstore.json
start Firefox and sidebar is not started automatically.

[FunnyDrew]

Thank you! it was helpful on Ubuntu for me!

[Eldon-Tyrell]

doing this on PC resulted in the sidebar being always closed on start

[Eldon-Tyrell]

I gave up on this and reinstalled Firefox - Then I found something on the web:

The open/closed-status of the sidebar as well as its width are only remebered, if the browser-history is set to being remembered - duh.

Extras / Settings / Security & History / History / "never remember history" --> must be unchecked

I think somebody commented this will be solved in FF-Version 133

I cannot tell if this would have solved my issue here since I already reinstalled Firefox - but it is true at the moment - i have just tested it.