So what are some of the Firefox settings and details you can tweak?

• Move Status Bar icons to any location
• Use Movable Firefox Menu Button (puts Firefox Menu Button in toolbar button so you can move it wherever you want)
• Display Page Title in Title bar while using Firefox Menu Button
• Add "New Tab" Option to Tab Context Menu

I have a feeling we are going to see a lot more add-ons for Firefox like this one.  Firefox 4 is leaps over bounds better than the version before, however the one thing that will hold it back will probably be the number of complaints about the user interface and how people like the older design better. Thankfully, Mozilla makes it easy for tweakers like us to fix or change things to look and feel the way we want them to.

You can pick up the Firefox 4 UI Fixer from the Firefox Add-ons website.

Mozilla Labs has released a very interesting new browser interface you can try out in Firefox 4.  Home Dash for Firefox 4 removes a lot of the Firefox user interface and gives you what they call "Browse-Based Browsing".  It really does bring a radically different way to use Firefox right to your fingertips.  Is it worth using?

Once installed, you are left with what is really an almost empty Firefox window.  The only browser interface elements that remain are the title bar, the search box, the scroll bar and that is about it.  Here is a little more about the project from Mozilla Labs:

Home Dash is the newest Prospector experiment to improve search and content discovery in Firefox. It removes all the standard web browser interface like the location bar, search bar and tabs; and leaves behind just a Firefox logo that is used to bring up a dashboard. Here on the right-hand side, Home Dash has found my top 24 sites and organized them based on my browsing behavior. While still far from it’s end goal, this was the original idea of making a browse-based browser (as opposed to a search-based one).

Overall, I thought it was an interesting user interface to try out – but I am not ready to retire the current browser interface just yet.  I am excited to see what they do with it in the future.  Almost makes me think of Firefox as a operating system when you go full screen, rather than just a web browser.

If you are running Firefox 4, you can try out this add-on immediately without even having to restart Firefox. Go pick it up at the Mozilla Add-ons website and learn more about it over at the Mozilla Labs.

We all have questions about how Firefox works and how we can tweak it to make it better.  That is the single greatest aspect of this fantastic browser. So, with the end of the year coming up quick I thought it was about time we took a look back at the 25 most popular browser tweaking tips, customizations and tutorials I have posted on Firefox Facts over the years.  These 25 posts you see are the most visited topics from all of the support related articles I have written.

You voted for these with your mouse clicks over the past year, so let us check out the most popular Firefox support posts of 2010.

Change Default Search in Firefox

Tired of having Google as the default search engine in Firefox? Maybe it is another search engine’s turn to be on top?! If you feel the urge to dethrone Google as the default search engine for your Firefox search box – this is how you can get it done.

How to Backup Firefox Bookmarks

Backing up your bookmarks is one of those chores you have on your to-do list but never get around to it.  Then when they are lost, you say – I wish I would have.  Here are a few Firefox bookmark backup techniques to help you out.

Firefox Private Browsing Mode Help and FAQ

Want to increase your privacy on your PC?  With the release of Firefox 3.5, our favorite browser now has a Private Browsing mode.  Usually your browser remembers the web sites you have visited, your user names and passwords, your browsing history and more.  However, with this newest addition to the Firefox 3.5 feature list, you can now go incognito on the Internet.

about:robots – Firefox 3 Secret!

For those of you playing with Firefox 3 – Beta 5, try typing about:robots into your address bar and hit enter.

Firefox 3.6 Fix – Open New Tabs in Far Right

New to Firefox 3.6, when you are on a page, and you want to open a link in a new tab – rather than opening the link in the far right of the tab bar, Firefox will now open the link right next to the tab you are in.  Now, while this might be convenient for some, it is a feature I don’t really need.  So here is how you can disable the new “Insert Related Tab After Current” tweak in Firefox 3.6.

There are a lot of Firefox features that don’t get much press, or are quickly forgotten about.  For example, did you know that you could switch to using Gmail or Yahoo! Mail as your default mail client (to handle those mailto links)?

To chance your settings, go to Tools, Options and then click on the Applications tab.  From there, type “mail” into the text box to go to the default mail handler settings.  From the drop down box, you should get several choices, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail being two of them.  Choose the webmail application of your choice, hit the button labeled, “OK” and you are all set.

Now you are ready to use the webmail provider of your choice as your default e-mail application, as far as Firefox knows.

From here you can change just about any way that Firefox relates to any other file, application or task out there.  Here are a few things I did to speed up my browser usage.

ARCHIVES: For archives (like .zip, .rar, ect) I set the action to “Save File”, that way I can skip Firefox asking me if I would like to open or save that type of file when I download it.

FEEDS: Since I am a Google Reader user when it comes to subscribing to feeds, I changed the Web Feed option from “Preview in Firefox” to “Use Google”.

MP3S: Another fix I like to do here is to set MP3 Format Found from the hijacking QuickTime (which like to take control of everything you do) to “Always Ask” cause sometimes I might want to stream it right there and other times, I might like to download it.

MAILTO: If you use Gmail a lot, you can also setup the mailto links to Use Gmail anytime you click a link that is formatted in that way.

I hope that handful of Application handling in Firefox is handy.  Just one more way Firefox lets you have the ultimate customized web browsing experience, if you you know where to look.

Please Note: To use any of these, you will need to have the Firefox add-on Stylish installed.

No Icon Image Until Click – New tab button icon does not appear until you CLICK on it instead of when you hover because there is another style that produces that effect.

Tiny + 3D(Special Effects) – New Tab Button on the tab bar is tiny and when you click on it, it changes.

Left Side New Tab Button – Move the new tab button to the left of the tab bar, instead of the far right of the tab bar.

Smaller New Tab Button – make the new tab button smaller, which changes how it looks in the Firefox interface (makes it more of a button).

Change the New Tab Icon into a Firefox Icon – Want something a little more colorful to show you how to open a new tab?  This user style will replace your new tab icon with the Firefox icon.

Round off the New Tab Button – Give that new tab button a rounded off edge, so it isn’t such a square.

Change the New Tab Button Color – with this, the new tab button will become another color when you hover.

Remove the Open a New Tab Button – Don’t like the new tab button?  With this user style you can get rid of it all together.

Hope you enjoyed these Stylish tweaks from the awesome coders at UserStyles.org.  If you have another favorite style edit for Firefox 3.5’s new tab button, or you fully enjoyed any of these tweaks, be sure to let us know in the comments.

Why make the move?  Well, one would guess that sharing links might be a more profitable business model, more so than bookmark syncing alone.  Via the Xmarks blog, here are some FAQs for those of you who might have questions about the change:

• Xmarks is a superset of Foxmarks – it adds web discovery features to our world-class bookmark sync.
• If you choose to upgrade to Xmarks, it will work seamlessly with your existing Foxmarks account and will sync with your other computers running Foxmarks.
• Foxmarks.com and our existing Foxmarks add-ons won’t change overnight. We expect to have upgrades to all three Foxmarks versions available by the end of March and we’ll provide you with more detailed info once we return from the DEMO conference.
• We’re still hard at work finding better, faster ways to sync more things in your browser.

So what new features will be brought on with the new business model?

Smarter Search – In your Google search results, Xmarks will highlight the top three sites based on bookmarking history.  Put your mouse over the special icon to the side of the search results to learn more information such as reviews, and rankings.

Site Info Lookup – Clicking on the Xmarks logo in your location bar will bring up a detailed box letting you know more information about the site you are on, and help you discover other sites just like it.

Then of course, you have the bookmark and password backup and syncing capabilities that Foxmarks already brought to the table.  The Xmarks browser add-on is Firefox only right now, but they promise to have Internet Explorer and Safari versions running soon.  Firefox fans can grab the Xmarks add-on here to try it out.  It is worth pointing out that you can install Xmarks even if you have the Foxmarks add-on installed on your computer. Xmarks will upgrade your current Foxmarks add-on and continue to sync and back up your bookmarks (and optionally passwords).

So what do you think about the change?  Excited about the new features, or disappointed that an old Firefox friend is changing its ways?

The oldbar addon replaces Firefox 3′s new address bar with the one that you are used to now in Firefox 2. Here is the new Firefox 3 address bar (or otherwise known as the location bar):

Then here is the classic one you will get with this Firefox 3 extension:

You can pick up the oldbar extension over at the Mozilla addons web site.

In your address bar, type in: “about:config”

Inside of the filter search box, type in:

browser.search.defaultenginename

Double click that entry (or right click and choose “Modify”) and then type in the name of the search engine you wish to have as the default search engine. It must be one that you already have installed and also make sure you type in the name correctly.

Now if you type in “Yahoo”, restart Firefox and when your browser comes back up you will see the red Yahoo “Y” and Yahoo as your default search engine.

The Better GCal extension for Firefox wraps some of the best Greasemonkey scripts into one easy to install extension. Editing the options of the extension allows you to also turn certain features on and off. Here are some of my favorite Greasemonkey scripts that have been included:

• Google Calendar Air Skin
• Collapse the Header and Sidebar
• Colorize Weekends
• Force Secure Connections (via https)

Plus a lot more tweaks and edits you can do.

If you use Google Calendar (or you think you might if a few things were changed around) then I would suggest giving this extension a shot.