Firefox SSL Indication

Firefox 3 is, in several ways an improvement over Firefox 2. But there are just a few things that drive me crazy. One of them is the way it handles the display of sites using SSL.

It used to be that a quick glance at your Location bar would tell you whether or not the data you were sending was encrypted. You could say "Gosh. Am I about to send my password across the wire in plaintext?" And, if the Location bar was white, you were. If the location bar was tan, you were not.

Some misguided people took this away, so now it is very difficult to tell whether or not your data is encrypted.

The topic is covered in depth elsewhere. It makes reference to the Firefox bug that has the discussion on it, but allow me to summarize:

Go to your about:config page, and set browser.identity.ssl_domain_display to 1. This enables the new UI for this.

An alternative, suggested by CNET, is to add this to your ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/chrome/userChrome.css file:

 #urlbar[level] .autocomplete-textbox-container > *
{ background-color: #FFFFB7 !important; } 

This method actually goes ahead and restores the tan url-bar. I think I prefer this solution.