I found it! I'd not thought to look at the settings for clearing things! Nothing was checked in the settings, although I know that they were before. Now, if I could only find a way to get rid of that ugly sidebar.

Hi sideburns, the sidebar is shared with bookmarks and history, and I don't see a way to only remove it when downloads are displayed. To knock it out for all 3, you can use a custom style rule:

@namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul);
#placesView #placesList {
  display:none !important;
}

Hopefully someone with better CSS skills will have a suggestion that is more surgical.

I don't ever bring up either history or bookmarks in a window; only in a dropdown list, so why do I care if they have a sidebar or not? I'll never see it, and I consider most sidebars to be a useless waste of space, anyway. I don't mind having them available for the very, very rare occasions that I need them, but for the most part, I just want them to GO AWAY. BTW, that url you gave me is 404 compliant.

Hi sideburns, I'm surprised you never use the Library dialog for other purposes, but that just means you can get by with the simpler rule.

Depending on your preference, you can apply style rules to Firefox using either a configuration file or the Stylish extension.

Here's how to create/edit the userChrome.css file if you prefer that way:

(1) Find (or create) the chrome folder. This is a folder in your currently active Firefox settings folder, also known as your Firefox profile folder.

• Open the your profile folder using: Help > Troubleshooting Information
  • Windows: Click the "Show Folder" button
  • Mac: Click the "Show in Finder" button

• Check for a chrome folder.
  • If it exists: double-click it to open it.
  • If it does not exist: create a chrome folder, then double-click it to open it.

(2) Create or Edit a userChrome.css file by adding your style rule.

Note: spelling and capitalization are crucial. If Windows does not display file extensions such as .css, .js, .doc, and so forth, change that setting as described in this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/865219.

• Check for a userChrome.css file in the chrome folder.
  • If it exists: open it in a text editor. Check that it has this first line:
    
    @namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul);
    
    Then paste in the new style rule (not duplicating the above line):
    
    #placesView #placesList {
      display:none !important;
    }
     
  • If it does not exist: create a new text file named userChrome.css. (In Windows, right-click and choose New > Text Document and change the name to userChrome.css, making sure the file type ends up being CSS file and not Text Document.)
    
    Then see the previous step for what to place in the file.

The rule change should take effect the next time you start Firefox.

Note: I find it easier to use the Stylish extension, but if you don't want yet another extension, then userChrome.css makes the most sense.

Sorry that the above is specific to buttons/folders on Windows/Mac but I am not familiar with Linux. You'll probably be able to figure it out.

Thank you for all of that redundant hand holding; I've been using my own computers since the late '70s, and first learned to program in 1968. I think I know what I'm doing, which is why I use Linux. I want to be able to decide for myself what programs I use, how they look and what options to use, so I use Xfce, not Gnome. If Seamonkey didn't do so many stupid things, such as ignore settings, I'd be using it at this point because the Firefox developers clearly don't care that not everybody wants things to look and work the way they do. If there were a highway that went where I want, I'd be on it.

Hi sideburns, does that mean you were able to hide the sidebar?

And apologies if you don't like the detailed replies, but if I don't put that in there, people finding this thread in a web search will ask confused follow-up questions for the next six months until it gets archived.

No, I haven't tried your instructions yet, because I have other things to do, such as eat, sleep and take the 26 pills I need to stay alive and reasonably healthy. However, at this point, if I found a different browser that did what I want in the way I want (or could be made to do so, using only standard settings) I'd switch in a heart-beat, and never look back the same way I switched DEs before Gnome3 came out because the devs made it impossible for me to make it work my way instead of theirs. (Hint: a desktop DE shouldn't try to mimic a tablet, especially by default!) However, that's getting way off-topic for this forum, and I'm not interested in continuing that discussion, either here or by email. Unless there's a known, tested fix, such as an extension, I'd prefer to consider this discussion closed.

Extension? This one was mentioned in another thread a few hours ago. I tried it for a few minutes and although there was a delay in it popping up, it seems to work once it's open.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downloads-window/

Thanx! That does exactly what I wanted. What's interesting is that the devs are claiming that it would take a complete re-write of that part of the code to do this, but a third-party coder managed it. Maybe they should get whoever wrote this working with them.