InformAction Forums

Good Morning.

I run Firefox and NoScript and am very happy with it.

Recently, on my Linux desktop box I updated to Ver 67.0 Firefox.

All of a sudden my presets for Google Home page display a mobile/tablet view upon any search I perform.

So far I have :

Cleared all my Cache/cookies & History.
Restarted the machine.
Restarted Firefox in safe mode (no addons) - which solves the problem, ie Search results displayed in Desktop mode.
Disabled all addons one by one, and it's definitely NoScript that is the problem.

The only was I can get back to a proper Desktop search result view is to 'allow all' in 'default' (General tab under options), or setting google.com (and the associated gstatic.com, etc) to 'Trusted'. In particular I have to allow 'scripts' to get a desktop search result page.

Is there some other thing I can try? In addition, if I allow scripts to force the desktop search result view, my Google search results page shows my location information and that annoying right side panel, or previews at the top showing video results. This did not occur in the past.

Since today, doing searches in google makes the results page display in mobile mode, even though I'm using my desktop. If I temporarily allow google.ca and gstatic.com, the results page displays properly. This doesn't happen in IE.

I had this problem a few times in the past. Just closing and restarting the browser would fix it. Now that doesn't fix the problem and searching in google always loads the mobile view of the search results.

I'm on Firefox 55 with noscript 5.1.8

It's not a Noscript issue - happens also if Noscript is not installed but javascript is otherwise disabled.

Looks like Google made some changes and I don't like them either. Currently the only way I can come up with to get back to the old design is to use a old enough user agent string.

But I would like to hear if someone finds an another method. Maybe some url or cookie parameter?

thanks skriptimaahinen for that idea.
seamonkey 2.49.4 / noscript 5.1.9 / xp sp3.
nothing worked on my end , cache , cookies and so on.
this works , three new strings in about:config.

general.useragent.override
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:67.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/67.0

general.useragent.override.google.com
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 7.1; Trident/5.0)

general.useragent.override.youtube.com
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/6.0)

Thanks for the information, skriptimaahinen and rereser. Sorry I pointed out Noscript as specifically the issue.
I'm really non-tech-savvy, so I hope you could help, how/where do add those strings in the about:config page? I can at least get there, haha.

just right click and select new string.
paste the name and you will be asked to enter the value.
if needed , change the .com to whatever google page you are using.
restart the browser when done and report back with the results please.

It worked! Thanks so much

Threads merged.

Wait, I spoke too soon. Youtube then showed that my browser was no longer supported. I tried removing the string for youtube, specifically; then youtube partially loads. But when temporarily allowing youtube, the page still appears pretty much blank with outlines for where the frontpage videos are supposed to be. Before adding these strings, youtube would load normally after temporarily allowing youtube.com. It only works properly after removing all 3 strings.

had that happen also the first time i loaded youtube from the top black bar on google.
empty page with gray squares.
closed the browser and tried again.
was asked for some privacy confirmation that time and i was in.
did not change anything after addind the three strings.
so check if the browser is fully closed in task manager and try again.
and check the value for all three , google and youtube are not the same.
can not test your firefox version.
only tested on seamonkey 2.49.4 and firefox esr 52.9 in xp.
you can try other values for youtube from this page.
http://www.useragentstring.com/pages/us ... t+Explorer
or the firefox ones.
http://www.useragentstring.com/pages/us ... me=Firefox

Yeah I think it's an issue with the Firefox version I have, 55. Tried as you said, but unfortunately it's still facing the same issue. I could try re-adding just the first 2 strings? Or is the youtube string also required? For me, it's only been google.ca that I've had the problem with.

Did you try clearing cache, cookies and history?

Though the youtube string is only necessary if you want to have older youtube design.

And the general.useragent.override should not be necessary for anything.

Try just setting general.useragent.override.google.com or even more specifically general.useragent.override.www.google.com

Same for google.ca too, in case you use both for searching.

Also do note that putting empty string for the useragent is not enough to clear it. You need to use the reset option from right click menu to remove it completely.

in my case the youtube string was needed.
by reading your reply you might only need the google.ca one.

rereser wrote: ↑Sat May 25, 2019 3:56 pm in my case the youtube string was needed.

Is that for some specific search?