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Before version 73.0b1 it was possible to filter about:config by entering in address bar:

about:config?filter=browser

After latest update to 73.0b1 this does not work any more. No preferences shown at all. Manual filtering through search box on the page works as expected however.

Is this a bug or filtering from address bar will not be supported in the future?

OS: Windows 10x64

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    It's the result of the change from XUL to HTML. Could be just not implemented yet, could be an intentional choice. You're probably better off searching bugzilla.mozilla.org, or requesting the feature there if an issue does not already exist.
    – Bob
    Jan 8, 2020 at 8:35

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According to this bugreport on Bugzilla, this feature was removed somewhere around october 2018 due to security concerns:

We explicitly decided to disallow deep linking into internal settings to reduce attack surface, present and potential.

To make a current example, "Open in New Tab" on an "about:config" link on the web works after a reload, even though the first load is disallowed. This probably wasn't foreseen originally, and we may have similar cases in the future.

Less steps for users isn't always better, see for example how the security certificate override dialogs are explicitly designed to slow down such operations. Deep linking into "about:config" to instruct users, for example, to disable those security checks in less steps could make it more attractive for attackers, and the link availability may seem like an official endorsement of the use case.

Since the report is marked as WONTFIX, the feature most likely won't be reintroduced in the future.

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