Like most of the modern browsers, Firefox shows suggestions when you type in the address bar. Those suggestions are based on your recent browsing history, include bookmarks, and may include search engine suggestions. The upcoming version 75 of Firefox strips the https:// and www portions from the suggestion URL.
When explaining the change, Mozilla noted that modern browsers are already hiding these parts. The company must be referring to Google Chrome, which is a product known for introducing such changes. So, starting in Firefox 75, the browser will replicate this behavior, and hide https:// and www parts from the suggestion URL.
The current version of Firefox shows suggestions as follows:
As you can see in the screenshot above, both https:// and www are visible next to the suggestion title.
Here is how the same looks in Firefox 75, which is in Nightly as of now.
While the HTTPS portion is hidden, Firefox 75 shows the protocol if the classic plain HTTP is in the URL.
As of this writing Firefox 75 'Nightly' comes with a special about:config option to disable the new behavior.
Disable New Behavior
- Open Firefox.
- In a new tab, type
about:configin the address bar. - Click I accept the risk.
- In the search box, type or copy-paste the line
browser.urlbar.trimURLs.
- Double-click on the value name in the search result to toggle its value from true to false.
You are done. You can reset the value at any time later to restore the new behavior.
Personally, I find this change unpleasant. I am familiar with a couple of sites which return differently formatted pages for www and non-www URLs. Hiding anything from the URL is always a bad idea, because it makes it harder to understand what is going on in case you see something that you didn't expect to see on a web page.
As of now, the actual Firefox version is 73.0.1. To learn more about changes introduces in Firefox 73, check out the following post:
Firefox 73 is available, here are the changes
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This is a HORRIBLE change. I hate Mozilla for copying Chrome again. I hope there is always an option.
Yep. I observed that nobody likes such changes.
There is also browser.urlbar.update1.view.stripHttps which you may set to false to block Firefox from stripping HTTPS.
I’ve tested the params against the newly released version 75 stable. The value
browser.urlbar.update1.view.stripHttpsyou’ve mentioned is not required to be changed.