General rule: Humans are smart, and have intent and agency. Software has none of the three. Software should not attempt to compete with humans.

You can set this pref to false on the about:config page.

• browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar = false

You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can click the button to "Accept the Risk and Continue".

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-config-editor-firefox

Dear Cor-el --

That much I know. As I wrote, I tried this and it didn't work. In about:config

  •  keyword.enabled and toggle it from True to False. 
  •  browser.fixup.alternate.enabled and toggle it from True to False.

Which specific config variables do I need to set in order to return to circa-version-68 circa-2019 behavior.

Thank you.

Thanks -- I've tried • keyword.enabled and toggle it from True to False.

 •  browser.fixup.alternate.enabled and toggle it from True to False.

and rebooted between. I still have the problem -- on the Mozilla home page, when I click into the search bar on the home page, and type the first character, the cursor bounces to the address bar. I do not want that. If I want a URL, I will type it in the address bar. If I click in a search bar, it's because I want a search.

How do I get that?

And the Zoom client and the Adobe viewer plugin broke too.

This is why so many users take the strongest steps possible to defend against Firefox updates. So far, I've lost four or five hours of billable time fixing things that broke between 68ESR and 91.3ESR. There is NO feature you can possibly add that's worth this much time lost.

I found this one.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1338543

That fixed the problem.

This change was stupid stupid stupid. Is there any adult supervision for what gets merged in, and the setting of defaults?

Note that I wrote above to modify the browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar pref.

Dear Cor-el -- thank you. I looked too quickly.