For those who are using Firefox 4 beta 7, you will notice that the status bar is now gone. In the past, whenever you hover your mouse over a link, the URL will be displayed in the status bar. With the removal of the status bar, the URL is now displayed in the address bar, alongside the existing page’s URL. Many users are angry at this change and some even petition to get Mozilla to restore the status bar.
Since FIrefox 4 is still in beta, so it is still not clear whether the the status bar is going to be removed permanently, or this is just an experimentation by the Mozilla team. For the time being, we just have to make use of extensions to bring back the functionality of the status bar.
1. Link Target Display
Link Target Display is a simple, no frill Firefox extension that displays the link in the left bottom corner, just like in Google Chrome. It does not restore the status bar, but at least it restore the URL (the URL that appears when you hover over a link) to a position where all of us are familiar.
There is one caveat though. When the URL is too long, it will get shorten in the display.
2. Status-4-Evar
Status-4-Evar is another extension that provides a collection of toolbar widgets that you can add to the add-on bar.
To use it, you have to first go to Preferences and select Add-on bar to get it to appear on the screen.
Next, right click at the Add-on bar and select Customize.
Drag the Status Text, Progress meter and Download Status icon to the add-on bar.
Optionally, you can also get it to display the progress bar underneath the address bar.
What do you think of the removal of the status bar? Do it find it an annoyance or it is nothing to make a big fuss of? Let us know in the comments.
