Find yourself looking for more browsing room in Firefox?  Well the titlebar for the Firefox window does take up some space – so why not remove it?  The Hide Caption Titlebar Plus is that add-on you need to make this happen.

This add-on for Firefox will basically take away the chrome wrapper of your Firefox browsing window, and squeezes in all the basic tools you might need.  You can still minimize, maximize, resize and close the Firefox window like normal.  There are no borders around the program at all though.  When using it, I thought it felt like Firefox was kind of embedded into my desktop – which is not a bad thing at all.

Here are a few more features of Hide Caption Titlebar Plus:

• Never: No standard caption for any window, not even popups. (You can get a nice *optional* custom caption bar & borders for dragging.)
• Smart Popups: FF main window/s with hidden std. captions, but the popups will be detected and will have std. caption & borders.
• Smart All: Maximized FF window/s will stay with hidden caption, but Restored (un-maximized) ones will get the standard caption!. (Popups always with caption)
• Always (Firefox default): All windows with standard caption.

Only negative I found with this add-on was you can no longer move Firefox around.  You have to kind of drag and resize the left, and then the right (or vice versa) to get it in the new location.  That is kind of a drag (pun intended).

Want to learn more?  You can go download the Hide Caption Titlebar Plus extension for Firefox from the Firefox Add-ons web site.

There is a lot you can do with Firefox when it comes to the mouse.  Now, most of the time people focus on all the keyboard shortcuts you can do with Firefox – however, the mouse shortcuts are equally as cool. 

Here are six of my favorite Firefox mouse shortcuts for you to remember:

• Middle click on a link (will open in new tab)
• Holding the Shift key and scrolling down (takes you to the previous page)
• Holding the Shift key and scrolling up (takes you to the next page)
• Holding the Ctrl key and scrolling up (increases text size)
• Holding the Ctrl key and scroll down (decreases text size)
• Middle clicking on a tab (closes that tab)

Have any other Firefox mouse shortcuts you hold near and dear to your heart?  Leave them in the comments and let us know your favorites that you use in your everyday browsing.

Recently, I needed to use Firefox in full screen mode, but ran into an annoyance you might have seen.  While the presentation was nice, seeing the web page stretch across my entire monitor when I hit the F11 key, I did not want the address bar and tab bar to disappear.

So, now the question I needed to answer is how can I always show the navigation toolbar and the tabs toolbar when browsing in full screen mode in Firefox?

The answer was simple, and probably overlooked by many.  When in full screen mode, simply right-click the navigation toolbar and un-check “Hide Toolbars”.

That is all you need to do.  There is no need for an about:config tweak or add-on to download.  Just an often overlooked and simple solution to a Firefox browsing preference.  Hope this comes in handy for all of you out there.  It just goes to show you sometimes the most simple Firefox fixes are right under your nose.

Once installed, all you have to do is quickly hit the F12 button to minimize the current browser window.  One more useful tip to know if that is switches to focusing on the first tab, so even if something peeks at your operating system’s task bar – they won’t know what you were looking at before.  So with that said, you should make sure tab number one is always looking at something work related, just in case.

A very neat and simple extension to make sure you don’t get in trouble for browsing where you shouldn’t at work – pick up the Simple Boss Key from the Firefox add-ons web site.

That might be a little extreme, but it does help to point out that this extension will let you split your browser up however you see fit to do so.

Here are the various ways you can split things up:

• Choose the “Split Browser to” menu in the context menu.
• Choose the “Load in Split Browser” menu in the context menu on link.
• Click popup-button on top/bottom/left/right edges of the content area.
• Drop links, bookmarks, tabs, etc. to popup-button on top/bottom/left/right edges of the content area while dragging.

To close split browser frames, hit the close button (for that frame) or “File” > “Close All Split Browser” closes all of them at once.  Another neat feature is that the status of the split browsing window saves, so it will automatically restore your splicing of the browser next time you start Firefox.

Split Browser is a terrific add-on if you are looking for a unique way to browse multiple web pages at once.

This comes in really handy for tablet PCs, where your pen is taking the place of your mouse.  You can though use it with your mouse too, as it comes ready for 1, 2, or 3 button mouse support.

Grab and Drag gives Firefox a new way to browse, and also has plenty of options to tweak till you get it just the way you want it.  You can pick it up on the Firefox Add-ons site or MozDev.org.

There you have it.  Once you have done so, it will ask you if you want to switch into Firefox’s private browsing mode.  You could also save about:privatebrowsing as a bookmark, so you have easy one click access to the private browsing mode, without adding any extra add-ons to Firefox.

Now here is my challenge to all of you out there, does anybody know a quick way to stop private browsing, and return your browser back to normal (other than the traditional menu method).  If you do, leave it in the comments!

Not only does this add-on give you a fancy new button, it also gives you a new keyboard shortcut to access the most recently closed tab (CTRL+SHIFT+Z). 

After installing the extension, to add it to your own browser interface you must add the button by going to View > Toolbars > Customize, then drag and drop the button anywhere on the toolbar.

The Closed Tab Button add-on for Firefox might be a little on the simple side, however when there is just a little problem to be fixed – nice to see an extension that gets the job done right without too much bloat.

The major goal of this tool is to make it where you can browse through the Web using the number pad to navigate through links. You would hit “1″ to go to the first link, “2″ to go to the second, and so on and so forth. Here is a little more on the process from the extension developer.

You can configure to use the numpad exclusively for Mouseless Browsing. In that mode you can trigger actions even the focus is on a textfield or selectbox. The output is suppressed. If you not use the exclusive mode then triggering actions by typing ids don’t work if the focus is on a textfield or a selectbox. Entering the id while holding the CTRL-Key triggers the action in any case. You can toggle between the two modes by pressing the num-key twice within 1 sec.

It might take a little ‘bit of time to configure the extension to your liking but once you do I could see anybody using this as an alternative way to browse around any web page. Also be sure to check out the official site for Mouseless Browsing to get some more configuration help and advice.

Quick Place to Store Pages for Later! 

If you have been in these situational shoes before, I have a quick fix that will let you get back to work. No extensions are needed and only a little browsing habit needs to be changed.

1. Right-click on your bookmarks toolbar and create a “New Folder”.

2. Name that folder “Temp”

3. Next time you find yourself looking at something you want to give a little more time to at a later date and time, drag the favicon “or page icon” in the address bar to this new “temp” folder and get back to doing what you need to be doing.

This is one of my little browser tweaks that I have been doing for years and years. It makes it really easy to save stuff you want to read through at a later date and time and once you have, you can delete it or move it to another one of your bookmark folders.