Minimal Firefox [HOW TO]

As stated in a previous post, and since nouman expressed interest, here are the tweaks I use for getting some pixel back from Firefox and maximize my screen real estate while I’m surfing.

This is particularly useful for netbooks, like the eeePc (especially the old 7”), but I also use it on my laptop (which has 1280×800).

We’ll use 4 plugins. Be advised, some of them are marked as experimental and will require you to register for an account on the mozilla site in order to be able to download.

Tiny Menu

The menu bar is the only bar you can’t hide by default. And also, honestly, the bar you’re likely to use less. Tiny Menu allows you to reduce the menus to one entry only, containing all the other ones. That way you’ll be able to use the unused space to host the navigation buttons, and the location bar.

First of all, download the extension from here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1455

Then reset Firefox. Now your menu should be reduced to just one entry. Right click on the menu bar (not on the menu itself !) and select ‘Customize‘. Choose Show: Icons and check Use small icons. While you’re there, drag at the right of the menu entry the buttons (back, forward, reload, etc) you use more often from the Navigation toolbar. Also drag there the location bar and the search box.

Close the dialog, right click again on the toolbar and uncheck everything.

If you done everything right, Firefox shuold appear like this:

firefox-tinymenu

Pretty cool, uh ? Lots of space saved. Be honest, how often do you use the menu while surfing ?

autoHideStatusBar

Now that made Firefox look cleaner and saved a bit of vertical space.. let’s save some more !

You can download autoHideStatusBar from here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1530

After you’re done and have restarted Firefox, go into Menu->Tools->Add-ons, look for AHS (green icon), select preferences, and tweak it to your liking. Being a little control-freaky I choose to have it appear instaneously when I hover on a link. Here’s my setup:

autoHideStatusBar setup

Break

If you got till here, you’re basically done. You already have removed a lot of visual cruft from Firefox. What follows are 2 further adjustments that you may like.

Searchbar Autosizer

Let’s try to get things better when we lack horizontal space, now. This plugin will autosize your search box while you type into it. That also means that it will take much less space when it’s empty, to the advantage of the Location Bar.

Download it from here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1172

Restart Firefox, then go into Menu->Tools->Add-ons and go into the preferences of the plugin. Select Advanced and make sure those two checkboxes are checked: Shrink SearchBar to Button if empty, Empty search bar when a query is submitted.

Now your location bar will enjoy the widest space available. At the same time, you’ll be able to search like before using ctrl+k, or clicking on the button that appears in place of the search box.

Fuller Screen

Differently from the previous tweaks, that were useful in constrained space situations, this plug in will help you get the most when Firefox it’s already taking all the screen. Better said, this is how full screen should have been by default.

After installing and restarting, the full screen will be a real full screen. No status bar, no tabs, no nothing. Just the web page.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4650

DONE !

Here’s how Firefox appears, with all tweaks applied.

(click the image to enlarge it it)

Oh, by the way

If you like the white theme, it’s a normal theme, which inherits directly from the Gnome one. Here’s how.

Also, if you detest having the Gnome panels always showing, here’s how to get rid of them.

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10 responses to “Minimal Firefox [HOW TO]”

anon
March 3, 2009 at 1:58 am | Permalink

you should check out the firefox extension called fission. It puts the most important thing that is usually in the statusbar (progress, and the address of the link you are hovering over) into the address bar
Mackenzie
March 3, 2009 at 9:37 pm | Permalink

Why the fuller screen extension? That’s the standard behaviour in Firefox 3.
Stefano Forenza
March 3, 2009 at 10:13 pm | Permalink

Hey Mackenzie .
Firefox 3 doesn’t hide tabs in full screen.
Mackenzie
March 4, 2009 at 12:39 am | Permalink

Yes it does. At least, if you choose Fullscreen from the View menu. I’ve noticed that F11 doesn’t always follow this behaviour.
Chris Tomalty
March 4, 2009 at 1:02 am | Permalink

Excellent How-To. My Firefox looks exactly like I’ve always wanted it to.

Kudos.
Sunny
March 5, 2009 at 1:57 pm | Permalink

Thank you for these gems !

May I also suggest the stop-or-reload button ? Saves quite some space

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/313
ben2talk
March 19, 2009 at 5:55 pm | Permalink

Good – but not too great. You can right click and hide ALL toolbars for browsing – no tabs and no menu! I use tinymenu, but also don’t want to lose my view of conky or gwibber applications, so I simply right click maximise to use maximum VERTICAL screenspace and remove the statusbar and menu bars from the top and bottom. I don’t like fullscreen or maximised windows to take over the desktop unless I’m doing something intensive like video or audio editing.

So add-ons: Fission is good, but had a problem with Yahoo-Mail (it never loaded, continually trying to reload, but I did love this add-on apart from that. It’s simply disabled, not uninstalled, waiting for updates)

Firegestures is essential, of course, to use the browser without having buttons on view – draw a quick L to close a page, roll the wheel to scroll tabs – takes away the need to move and click stuff all the time.

‘Hide All Toolbars’ is a nice one – careful about the shortcut (F4 may clash – can be disabled, because this is accessible through a right click on the browser) – it leaves the tabs visible, and ’stumbleupon’ which I can further remove with a right click. So now I have a window decoration. The skin can make a difference – using compiz on gnome, you can find some very tiny borders. I have a matching ’sunday’ emerald theme, but prefer a very slim window border called ‘blue carbon’ – so switch from the ‘compiz-fusion’ icon. The other tweak is the ‘application font’ which I recently changed to ‘Book Antiqua’ – nicely spaced out horizontally, but it gives beautifully compact menu’s and toolbars – so I have a 10-pixel window decoration, and around 5 pixels at the bottom – with the window around 1025 wide, leaving me the balance of my 1440 widescreen to see other things.

Firefox add-on I think called ‘mixtabsplus’ enables me to choose to open tabs in a new window, merge windows, stuff like that – if I want to view a page with no tab bar.

Happy surfing
Niels Egberts
March 26, 2009 at 4:18 pm | Permalink

Thanks a lot! I really like to have as much content on my screen
Chrome to Firefox, Bashee Internet Radio and Linux! « :D
May 25, 2009 at 11:06 pm | Permalink

[...] a link to Stefano Forenza’s EXCELLENT blog, where he explains how to do it in detail: http://www.stefanoforenza.com/minimal-firefox-how-to/. Do give his other articles a read, too. They’re really different and [...]
Leo Zerleg
July 26, 2009 at 5:21 pm | Permalink

You always can use the extensions in ‘Minimal Look‘, they make the interface much smaller and cleaner.