Problem with Safari Favorites bar bookmarks

This falls under the "annoyance" classification: I open Safari (on a Mac Pro running Mojave 10.14.6), and click on an established site name in the Favorites bar. What happens next is sometimes just what I want, i.e., appearance of the hoped-for website; just as often, however, the site ID, such as eBay or Wikipedia, turns from a grey-on-grey site ID to a live field, with a blue field border and a blue fill with the site name ready to be changed, as if I had clicked on the site name in order to correct the spelling, and I will NOT be taken to my selected destination. If I click again on the field, either I get the same result, and keep getting it over and over, or sometimes I might actually get to my selected website- It's a crapshoot. I've gone over the preferences and changed most of them, but nothing helps, and I have wasted plenty of time getting nowhere with Safari. Why is this happening now, and is there any way to stop it? See photos.