Show History Frequent Sites Button by jscher2000

Missing the "Show History" (triangle) button from the address bar? This extension provides a very similar list through a toolbar button (you can use the Customize feature to move the button closer to the address bar). Before installing, please review the following information to make sure you need it.

== Firefox 75+ Address Bar Behavior ==

In Firefox 75+, when the cursor moves into the address bar, a list automatically opens. By default, it is the first 8 of your Top Sites from the Firefox Home / new tab page. Type a space in the address bar to show the classic frequently visited URLs list.

As of Firefox 78, it's no longer possible to switch the Top Sites list to the classic frequently visited URLs list, but if you clean out unwanted content from the Top Sites section of the Firefox Home / new tab page, Firefox should fill the list from your history, giving you a similar frequently visited URLs list. This is the way forward using the built-in feature.

• Cleaning up your Top Sites list: Customize the New Tab page
• Turning on the Top Sites section of the page: Hide or display content in New Tab

If you don't want the drop-down to open automatically, you can disable that by setting browser.urlbar.suggest.topsites (for Firefox 75-77 it was browser.urlbar.openViewOnFocus) to false in about:config. See: Configuration Editor for Firefox. You still can call up the classic frequently visited URLs list by typing a space in the address bar.

== About This Add-on ==

This button pulls your most frequently visited URLs in "frecent" order, meaning the list is weighted by the recency of your visit as well as the number of visits. It should mostly match the list the address bar shows if you type a ^ character in the bar.

Note: You can switch the list shown by this extension to your Top Sites from the new tab page and include way more than 8 if you like the idea of controlling what is on the list.

Please refer to the above screenshots for more information on layout and options.

Limitations:

• Titles: the topSites list always shows the title from history, even for bookmarked sites.
• URLs: the topSites list drops parameters (for example, on searches, ?q=firefox) for history results, but they are included for bookmark results.
• Local files and internal pages: Firefox excludes these from the topSites list.
• Hidden URLs: Firefox excludes URLs that are marked as hidden in the Places database, which includes addresses that always redirect to a different URL.

Permissions (see manifest.json):

• topSites permission allows the extension read-only access to up to 100 frequently visited sites. The actual number retrieved is set in the extension options. The list is used only to show the drop-down and have Firefox open the indicated URL. (MDN)
• storage permission allows the extension to save and read options.
• [optional] tabs permission allows the extension to read the URLs of open tabs (for the switch-to-tab option)

In case you're curious:

Firefox doesn't allow showing this list in the built-in address bar drop-down. I tested placing the button inside the address bar in the Page Actions area (where the bookmark star is), but when the cursor enters an empty URL bar -- for example, on a new tab -- the Page Actions area is not displayed. So it is more accessible as a regular toolbar button.