Check out this article. You can easily customise what appears in the Firefox toolbar by opening the Firefox menu and selecting "Customise" at the bottom.

I know how to move around the items in the toolbar. It's the ADDRESS bar that I'm trying to change. Again, there are icons and non-URL text INSIDE the address bar that I want to get rid of. Your solution merely moves the address bar around, it has zero effect on the icons and text within the address bar.

Additionally, when you remove the "location" part of the address bar then it stops showing the URL completely, as well as replaces the "location" icon with yet another icon and replaces the star on the right with a magnifying glass. The solution I want, again, involves having only the plain text of the URL in the address bar, no other icons, text, etc.

Ah, got you now. I'd recommend checking out Stylish, which lets you customise the browser's chrome using CSS. I've had a quick look at userstyles.org for something that does what you want, but I can't find anything which achieves what you want, so you might have to roll up your sleeves and have a play with some custom CSS.

I have Stylish to fix other poorly though out changes that FF has made over the years. But it seems really silly that it would be impossible to change something as simple as what appears in the address bar. Its already frustrating that I can't even get rid of the green padlock and 1/4 of the address bar that "Mozilla Foundation (US)" takes up without completely losing the URL. It's literally blank as I browse with that icon removed. Plus, when you remove it, it replaces itself with another icon. Why in the heck is it sticking icons in a place reserved for text in the first place? Why can't these icons be moved at least outside the address bar?

dumbie said

But it seems really silly that it would be impossible to change something as simple as what appears in the address bar.

It's not impossible. The elements in the address bar can be customised just like almost every other element of the Firefox interface. For example you can target the site identity information by using selector #identity-box in Stylish. #identity-box { display:none; } therefore hides this element.

So at first you said there's no way to do this, then you say using Stylish and some prewritten scripts it would be possible but there's not any scripts for it, and now you're giving me what appears to be the solution. Why didn't you just give me the solution first? And to be real, all that stuff you're talking about is Greek to me. I'm not a programmer, a coder, or any of that stuff. I'm a normal person who just wants less user friction in my browsing experience-- like being able to see the URL. The only reason I ended up with Stylish is that I spent two days wasting my time on this support area before some random other website suggested I try using Stylish to regain a useful item FF has thrown away, and went ahead and did it out of sheer desperation. I don't know what CSS is and I don't know what Stylish actually does and I have no clue what it means to "target site identity information"-- its just computer people jargon that helps normal people like me not at all. If there isn't a simple setting change, then I'm over it. Guess I'll join the masses and just put up with a browser that constantly frustrates me.

I simply misunderstood your question at first. I'm not an expert with the Firefox chrome myself, but hopefully someone else can chime in and give some additional pointers. Good luck resolving your issue.

I use code to hide the URL in case of a EV certificate and only show it on hover. You still see the green padlock. That gives me extra space on the location bar

Add code to the userChrome.css file below the default @namespace line.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/userChrome.css

@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); /* only needed once */

#identity-box #identity-icon-labels {display:none}
#identity-box:hover #identity-icon-labels {display:-moz-box}

The customization files userChrome.css (user interface) and userContent.css (websites) are located in the chrome folder in the Firefox profile folder.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Editing_configuration

You can also add some background color.

/* Site Identity Button background */
#urlbar[pageproxystate="valid"] #identity-box.verifiedDomain *{
  background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(hsl(215,60%,92%), hsl(215,58%,88%))!important;
  box-shadow: 0 1px 0 hsla(215,54%,33%,.05) inset!important;
  -moz-border-end-color: hsla(215,54%,33%,.2)!important;
  color: hsl(215,54%,33%)!important;
}

#urlbar[pageproxystate="valid"] #identity-box.verifiedIdentity *{
  background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(hsl(91,70%,90%), hsl(93,60%,81%))!important;
  box-shadow: 0 1px 0 hsla(92,81%,16%,.05) inset!important;
  -moz-border-end-color: hsla(92,81%,16%,.2)!important;
  color: hsl(92,81%,16%)!important;
}