Firefox 81.0.1 – Floating Banner

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Firefox recently updated itself to 81.0.1. I’ve now noticed that every time I visit a website, the website’s banner floats downward with the scroll. It’s very irritating because this floating banner covers up some of the screen that I want to read. Here are a couple of screenshots to show what’s happening. This is the top of a website. The banner is marked in red.

Now, I’ve scrolled down the page and the website banner pops up. Again, it’s marked in red.

The floating banner doesn’t stay “up” all the time. It intermittently disappears and then intermittently pops up as I scroll down. Sometimes I can scroll down an entire screen or two without the banner popping up, but sooner or later, it will pop up again.

How can I get this intermittent banner behavior to stop??

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Are you using the ‘noscript’ extension by chance?
If so, you need to allow certain scripts to run in order for the page to render as intended by the web developers.
eg: for bleepingcomputer
bleepingcomputer.com
bleepstatic.com
and any others you see fit to allow (or not)

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created IT- AE

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Microfix wrote:

Are you using the ‘noscript’ extension by chance?

Not running the ‘noscript’ extension. In fact, running only two, one for Cisco WebEx and the other for McAfee WebAdvisor, both of which have been there for a long time. This problem seems to have cropped up with the Firefox 81.0.1 update..

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The sometime ill behaving floating site navigation banner it is part of the website design, the uBlock Origin browser extension can temporarily zap the banner (Element zapper – lightning bolt) or permanently block it with the Element Picker (medicine dropper) icon. Elements are parts of a website like this banner, it could be an text/image box or video container.

A few tries may be needed to hide the whole banner.

1. Click the uBlock Origin icon, and then click Element Zapper (lightning bolt icon). The cursor will change to a cross hatch or target shape.

2. Carefully move the mouse cursor to the banner’s edge, and then up or down along the edge.

3. When you see the whole banner highlighted, click.

The result should be that the navigation banner temporarily disappears, and reappear when reading another article.

If you want this navigation banner banished then repeat starting with step 1 but click on the Element Picker (medicine dropper) icon. After step three you will see a dialog box appear where you can preview your choice, create a rule to block the element(s), or pick elements.

The Escape key to cancel the Element Zapper or Element Picker, the other way of escape it to reload the page.

 

Alternatively with NoScript (all scripts blocked) installed you can have the banner remain static but with a small reduced capability of site navigation.

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Ascaris

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anonymous wrote:

The sometime ill behaving floating site navigation banner it is part of the website design,

I’ve visited BleepingComputer.com many times before Firefox 81.0.1 and the floating banner never disappeared and appeared intermittently, at least not that I recall. The navigation banner also occurs now when visiting https://support.mozilla.org and https://www.facebook.com/ but its appearance is not intermittent In other words, it’s there and stays there. And there’s no navigation banner at all at https://www.askwoody.com.

Maybe, it IS part of the website design and Firefox 81.0.1 picks it up, whereas earlier versions of Firefox did not. Maybe, the intermittent behavior at bleepingcomputer.com is due to some faulty website design. It’s the intermittency that is [annoying]. It disappears, sometimes for several scrolls through a page, but then it pops up again.

I don’t mind the navigation banner if it is static. Thanks for the suggestion of the uBlock Origin add-on. I’ll try it to see if it makes things better. Can you be selective about the sites you want it to apply to — rather than hitting the ESC key when you want it back?

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You remember well! For the sake of testing I have visited the Bleepingcomputer site using an older Firefox based browser and the navigation banner’s behavior is much less jittery. So Mozilla’s or Bleeping Computer’s staff will have to examine the details for a remedy.

You can use uBlock Origin selectively on sites to great effect, here is the link to the documentation.

Oops a better explanation (I hope): After you have begun using either Element selection mode (zapping or picking) pressing escape will return to normal page view.

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I use uBlock Origin to remove stuff like that all the time. It’s especially useful in this mobile-first era, where so many web pages appear in a narrow strip down the center of the (landscape) screen on a desktop or laptop PC, so I set the default zoom to 170%, which results in most sites filling the screen side to side. A side effect of that is that the static titlebar/search bar/menu bar/nav bar at the top expands too, and fills up much of the content space. uBlock Origin makes it all work without having half or more of my screen unused because the site assumes a portrait orientation. No squinting and no “helpful” nav bars taking up half the screen!

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Charlie, OscarCP

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It seems to be a site-specific phenomenon. I’ve done a ‘scroll-test’ at bleepingcomputer.com. If you scroll forward, the banner disappears. If you scroll backward, the banner re-appears for as long as you are scrolling back. As soon as you start scrolling forward again, the banner goes away. If you are scrolling back (which triggers the banner to re-appear) and you stop scrolling back, the banner will disappear after about 8 seconds (too long if you are scrolling back to re-read something). But, too bad if your cursor happens to be resting high up on the page, because then you get an even larger banner because a banner tab has been opened. And the banner and its opened tab will not go away when you start scrolling forward, unless you move the cursor downwards.

Evidently, the site developers there assume that one scrolls back because of a need to navigate elsewhere, and not to re-read something on the page (which you will have to wait until the banner goes away to read). And don’t ever rest your cursor near the top of the screen!

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I consider the problem resolved — 1) the navigation banner behavior seems to be specific to this site (and not Firefox), 2) once you understand how scrolling affects the banner behavior, you can avoid the problem (or be patient), and 3) there is a software solution to get rid of the navigation banner altogether.

Thanks everyone who has replied to this topic.

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