If you are running Firefox 23 or newer on your system and use the bookmark star (bookmark this page) frequently you may have noticed that Mozilla moved it away from the browser's location bar. I ran into that issue a couple of days ago when I noticed that my bookmarks icon was gone from the browser's navigational toolbar. The only option that I had in the browser's customization menu was to either add the sidebar opening bookmarks icon to it, or a new icon that is a combination of the bookmark star and the icon that I wanted to restore.

As you can see on the screenshot below, Firefox displays the bookmark star, that is the icon that you can click on to bookmark a page right away, and the bookmark menu next to each other. There is no option in the browser to split the two apart again, and as of now, there is also no option to bring back the bookmark star to the address bar.

Why the change? Australis of course. The theme has become synonymous with changes that irritate at least part of Firefox's user base, and this one is no different from other changes that Mozilla plans to make to the browser.

Merging the buttons can cause quite a few problems. First, you are wasting space on the toolbar whereas before you were able to use the address bar for the bookmark this page icon instead. Since they are close to each other, it happens that you accidentally click on the wrong icon, so that you end up with a bookmark that you do not want.

What would have been a better course of action? Mozilla could leave things as is which would have pleased all users of the browser. Since that does not seem to have been an option, it could have at least separate the two icons as before and include options to move the icons back to their original position.

Ken Saunders mentioned in a comment that you can get the single bookmarks menu button back by installing Classic Bookmarks Button. While that adds the single button back, it does not re-add the star icon to the address bar.

If you have installed the extension in the browser click on Firefox > Options > Toolbar Layout and move the new icon back to the toolbar that you want to use it on.

Will there be an add-on or CSS hack to bring back the star as well? I honestly do not know yet. Maybe when the change is exposed to the Aurora, Beta or Stable channels if it is technical possible that is.

How can you bookmark pages now in the browser?

Use the shortcut Ctrl-D.

Click on the bookmarks menu and select Bookmark this page.

Tap on the Alt-key and select Bookmarks > Bookmark this page.

Select Firefox > Bookmarks > Bookmark this page.

What is your take on this latest change?

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