In Firefox 4 by default the Stop, Go and Reload buttons are combined and attached to the right hand edge of the location bar.

When you are typing in the location bar it will show the Go button. When a site is loading it shows the Stop button. At other times it shows the Reload button.

If you want separate buttons, right-click on a toolbar and choose Customize, you can then drag and drop the stop or reload buttons and place them elsewhere. If you place them in the order "Reload-Stop" on the right hand edge of the location bar they will be combined again. For more details on customizing the toolbar see https://support.mozilla.com/kb/How+to+customize+the+toolbar

Otherwise try F5 (easier for me)

What a complicated process. I downloaded Firefox 4 but am not very happy with it. The entire program is complicated. I too would like to go back to the former version.

Re: Mozilla Support Forum Thread: "Firefox 4 ... DOES NOT SEEM TO HAVE A REFRESH VIEW ICON/BUTTON ?? WHERE IS IT??"

This is pathetic.

Does it never occur to Mozilla to introduce a radical change in user interface design by providing it as a user-selectable OPTION, an alternative to the standard, established, conventional user interface with which many millions of users are already familiar and comfortable, rather than just implementing it as a new default to the surprise and bewilderment of those millions of users?

Not only is this insensitive and discourteous, it also does not even work as described.

1. Although Mozilla claims that the new Refresh/Stop button will display a Refresh button (and ONLY a Refresh button), after a page has finished loading, this is not true. The ingeniously idiotic "combo button", IN FACT displays ONLY the Close Button (X) when a page has finished loading -- which obviously makes NO sense whatsoever.

Makes NO sense, that is, unless one chooses to perversely conceptualize the display of ONLY a STOP button on a page that is ALREADY STOPPED as a "double-negative", meaning that clicking said button would function as a command to tell the page to "STOP BEING STOPPED", i.e., one should click the STOP button in order to REFRESH the page.

But for ordinary, sane people, Having only a STOP button displayed on a page that is already STOPPED, is simply stupid and nonsensical.

2. It gets even worse...

Not only is ONLY the STOP Button (X) displayed on pages that are Stopped -- the STOP button is GRAYED OUT!!!!!! So, not only can you not click the REFRESH Button to Refresh your Stopped Page because that REFRESH Button is not present at all -- bad enough -- but you also cannot click on the STOP Button, even if for some perverse reason you wanted to!!! Now, how smart is THAT?????

3. According to Mozilla, the REFRESH button (and ONLY the REFRESH Button) is supposed to be displayed ONLY when a page is STOPPED, because, according to Mozilla, it would make no sense to display a REFRESH Button on a page which is currently REFRESHING.

(Perhaps they felt that this would be to commit a "double-positive", which would effectively result in a Negative outcome, and compassionately decided not to do it, since this would surely confuse ordinary users... Never mind the fact that in ordinary math, multiplying double positives does NOT yield a negative -- we can see that their intentions were honorable.)

However, for ordinary, sane people, it does indeed make sense to do so. There are many occasions in which a page is loading, but it hangs up at some point while attempting to REFRESH, such that the REFRESH continues interminably, forever, never completing, never reaching a STOPPED state. In such cases, clicking a REFRESH button while the page is REFRESHING has the desirable result of initiating a Fresh new page REFRESH, aborting the hung Refresh attempt, thus allowing the page to finally reach an actual Completed, Finished, STOPPED state.

Sometimes, when a page is in a Stopped state, a user may unintentionally or carelessly initiate a page Refresh (e.g., by accidentally clicking a link on the current page which will load a different page, replacing the current Stopped page; or, e.g., by explicitly initiating a refresh of the contents of the current page - by clicking a Refresh Button, or clicking a Double-Negative-Stop button), then realize moments later that he does not want the refresh, desiring instead to Cancel the Refresh operation before it completes. So, it is necessary to also have a STOP Button available while a page is Refreshing.

Thus, when a page is Refreshing, it is necessary to have BOTH a REFRESH and a STOP button available to the user, so that they can either abort the current in-progress Refresh attempt to remain on the current page, or initiate a fresh new Refresh operation, e.g. to escape a hung Refresh.

So Mozilla's brilliantly idiotic idea of creating this toggle-combo-button which displays ONLY one or the other, a REFRESH or a STOP icon, but not BOTH, is obviously a STUPID idea which should never have been implemented if anyone there at Mozilla was paying attention to considerations of USABILITY, instead of being infatuated with ideas that seem to be Novel, Cute, New, Different, Unusual, or "Clever," and which have that Wowie-Zowie Glitter factor.

4. In point of fact, the Firefox 4 Wowie-Zowie-Combo-Toggle-Refresh-Stop button does not even do what Mozilla thinks it is supposed to do (displaying only REFRESH button when page is stopped, etc.), as I pointed out above. So not only did Mozilla deliberately intend to implement a bad idea -- they then failed to implement the bad idea correctly. If they had managed to at least implement the bad idea correctly, one could at least admire them for doing a bad idea well. But this was a badly implemented bad idea, which makes the whole thing not just bad, but DOUBLE-BAD!!!

5. Mozilla believes that if a user Customizes the toolbars, (which causes BOTH buttons, Refresh & STOP, to be displayed SIMULTANEOUSLY -- while in the customization mode) and the user moves these two buttons from their default position (at the right end of the Address Bar Field) to another location somewhere else on the toolbars, and if the user positions them adjacent to each other, in a particular order -- with the REFRESH Button first (on left) and the STOP button next (on right) -- then this will result in the two buttons being consolidated into a "Combo-Button," just like the default appearance, when Customize mode is exited. But Mozilla maintains that if a user relocates the two buttons in a different fashion, then the user interface will display both buttons simultaneously, thus enabling the user to set things up so as to emulate how things worked in earlier Firefox versions.

However, this is not true. In fact, it does not matter where the buttons are relocated to, nor whether they are adjacent to each other, nor whether they are arranged in that particular order relative to each other -- in all cases, no matter how the user places the two buttons, when Customize mode is exited, the two buttons will once again become consolidated into a single "Combo Button".

So, contrary to Mozilla's intentions, it is not possible for a user to set up his toolbar in the conventional, traditional fashion, with both buttons being displayed simultaneously. The user does NOT have the option of setting up his Firefox 4 to emulate the appearance and function of the REFRESH and STOP buttons as they were in versions 1.x, 2.x and 3.x of Firefox. Users are instead STUCK with this utterly stupid, ill-conceived idea.

6. It appears that the only way to initiate a REFRESH operation when a page is already REFRESHING, and/or is "hung" in an infinitely long REFRESH state, would be to press the F5 key (which conventionally has been used in many applications as a "Refresh" key).

While it is good that the F5 functionality still works --

(and it is probably a lucky miracle that it DOES still work -- i.e., that none of the geniuses at Mozilla decided to disable the F5 key functionality, in order to make the user interface internally consistent by making ONLY the "New! Improved! Brilliantly-Conceived!" Combo-Toggle-Button Refresh/Stop method available, forcing users to abandon their old, boring and inferior way of thinking and adopt this Modern and Clever way of doing things, helping the fad to "catch on" and spread "like wildfire" until it becomes the universal norm, so as to hasten the day when our young Mozilla genius is admitted into that lofty, rarified realm, taking his rightful place among the Pantheon of Intellectual Giants, those few who have spawned the revolutionary Paradigm Shifts that profoundly and forever altered the course of human thought and history, those inventors/discoverers of Universal Truths, Principles, Laws and Icons -- the elite of elites, including Max Planck with his Universal Constant, Galileo and his Law of Gravity, Einstein with his Relativity Theory, Plato with his Platonic Ideals, Mozart, Copernicus, Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, Hilary Clinton, etc. )

-- the sad fact is that many people are completely oblivious of the F5 key, and so will be doomed to the eternal futility of trying to click on a Refresh Button that just isn't there.

7. This leads us to the inescapable conclusion that the new Firefox 4 Combo-Toggle-Refresh-Stop-Button-Icon is in fact an insidious virus that poses a grave danger to the sanity of mankind. As if mankind's sanity were not in enough trouble already, Mozilla had to go and unleash this thing on us...

What is the solution? I don't have the answer for you as yet, but I can assure you that we here at the Faith-Based-Antivirus Company are working feverishly 24/7 to find a way to detect and demolish this scourge before it is too late. You can help! Any contribution that you can make via a Paypal donation to believers@fath-based-antivirus.com will be put to good use. Stay tuned...

@jonkers: WHAT THE HACK? (to say it in your size) 1. Click "Customize" in the context-menu at the upper bar. 2. You see a stop button and a refresh button. Click on the refresh-button, take it anywhere and put it back. 3. You now have two buttons: stop and refresh

What an unnecessary post above...

No stop button shows when I click on Customize.

When you click customize the stop button, by default the Stop button will appear on the right hand side of the location bar. You can then drag and drop it elsewhere.

By pressing CTRL-F5 will allow you to refresh and reload screen WITHOUT the cache copy of your current URL loaded into the current tab.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/active-stop-button/

this addon will allow you to have you're reload and stop buttons, side by side in any order you want and remain seperate buttons, just like they always did in the older, far better layout.

the thing that some people here don't seem to realize is that simply placing the buttons apart from each other is not really a solution, not if you want them next to each other like you've always had them.

it's sad that we're having to rely on third party addons to sort out firefox 4's terrible design issues, rather than its developers...

No matter where I look I still have not found an answer. I do not want this new Firefox and no one can tell me how to get rid of it. If I'm stuck on this I'll just have to go back to Explorer.