Here is a quick screen grab of my own Firefox installation using the old Firefox 3 icons:

I do have to say, I don’t mind the change.  All of the design aspects from Firefox 3 that they decided to keep feel like they fit right in with Firefox 4.  I think I might actually use this theme for a while.

You can pick up the Firefox 3 theme for Firefox 4+ over at the Firefox Add-ons website.

With Firefox 4 coming soon, we will be finding a lot of new hacks, interface customizations and more we can do to make Firefox more personalized to our own needs.  So, with that said, I thought it might be fun to look back at some of the most popular hacks for Firefox 3.5 and up to give you all one last chance to try them out before Firefox 4 changes the game again.

How to Disable the New Tab Button

For some people out there, the new tab button on the tab toolbar was a waste of space.  By editing your userChrome.css file, you can easily remove it.

Speed Up Flash Videos (like YouTube)

Want to speed up your flash video watching?  By default, Firefox takes a sort of “snapshot” of whatever you are doing every ten seconds.  Why?  It is so that the browser can restore itself, just in case of a crash. With a little about:config tweak you can speed up the videos you are watching on YouTube and other video sharing websites.

Quicker Route to Private Browsing

Yes, we did finally get a way to enable private browsing in Firefox.  The problem is, it is a pain to enable!  Well, to save you a few clicks, I figured out a way you can start private browsing mode in Firefox from within the awesome address bar.

Move the Close Tab Button

In an effort to simplify the Firefox interface, did you know you can make a few changes in the about:config page to move the close tab buttons around?  I’ll show you how to move it to the far right of the browser, in just six easy steps.

Enable the Visual Tab Switcher

With Firefox 3.6’s release, we can all do a quick about:config tweak that will enable the prettier tab switching.  By default, when you hit the keyboard keys Ctrl + Tab you just rotate through your tabs.  By making some quick adjustments though, you can pull up the new tab switcher that you see in the picture above.

Make New Tab Pages Open in the Far Right of the Tab Bar

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.  Now, let us put things back the way they were.

Change the Firefox Spell Check Font Format

Want to make your misspelled words stand out a ‘bit more when composing a message in Firefox?  It is easy to do with this quick about:config tweak.  You can select no highlighting, a dotted line, long dots, a single straight line, a double underline or the default squiggly line.

I hope you enjoyed this collection of classic Firefox 3.5+ interface hacks and tweaks you can do to make the browser a little more customized to your own browsing needs.  Have another favorite customization tip I might have missed?  Leave it in the comments!

Needing an extension-less fix for converting long links into short ones?  Now, we all know there are dozens of Firefox add-ons that could do this for you, but do you really need another extension to your browser? Maybe not. 

I got an e-mail from a Firefox Facts reader who asked…

"What way do you suggest is best for link shortening? I don’t want to install another add-on if possible.  Thanks!"

I’ll share with you the way I handle all my link shortening needs.

I would suggest you go sign up for bit.ly.  They are one of the best link shortening services out there today.  They have been around a while, so you know they are not going away (and breaking all your short links) anytime soon.  They also give you tons of statistics for all the links you shorten too.

The bookmarklet is the best part about the service.  As you can see in my screenshot above, it opens up a pane on top of the page you are looking at with the text all ready to copy, paste and share.  You can even use it to tweet your short link via Twitter too – if needed.

To grab the bookmarklet, all you need to do is register for bit.ly, and then drag the bookmarklet to your links toolbar in Firefox.

So there is your quick and easy extension-less fix for an everyday browsing problem.  While I still fully love all the Firefox add-ons and extensions out there, sometimes there is a better or easier way to do things without installing one more addition to the browser.

Firefox 3.0.7 fixes five security holes, so it is an important update to get. 

• URL spoofing with invisible control characters
• Upgrade PNG library to fix memory safety hazards
• XML data theft via RDFXMLDataSource and cross-domain redirect
• Mozilla Firefox XUL Linked Clones Double Free Vulnerability
• Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.9.0.7)

Along with those, there are a number of different bug fixes too. 

To help better reflect the number of changes coming to Firefox 3.1, Mozilla has decided to rename it Firefox 3.5. However, the next Firefox 3 beta will still be released under the 3.1 name.  That should cover all the important information – but if you want to learn more, check out the status meeting notes via the Mozilla.org wiki.

Here are a few of them that are targeted for Alpha 1:

• worker threads (under review)
• offline storage / local storage (under review)
• downloadable fonts (kinda maybe)
• native JSON (under review)
• WHATWG <canvas> text API
• Awesomebar improvements (need review gavin, shepherding)
• border image (under review)
• media queries (under review)
• bulk tagging
• ctrl-tab

Will Firefox 3.1 create as much excitement around the world as Firefox 3 did?

When add-on authors publish their add-on they declare the compatibility range for an add-on. It typically looks like “2.0 to 3.0.*” – meaning that at minimum, this add-on requires Firefox 2.0 and works with any maintenance release of Firefox 3.0. (End of the compatibility range is also called the maxVersion).

Some add-on authors have erroneously used “3.0″ as their maxVersion so when users with these add-ons upgrade from Firefox 3.0 to Firefox 3.0.1, the add-on gets disabled. We encourage these add-on authors to use “3.0.*” as their maxVersion.

So shoot your favorite extension authors an e-mail and ask them to get this fixed, or check to see if this might be the problem.  Another suggestion for people with lots of problems would be to try running Firefox with a new profile or Safe Mode.  In Safe Mode, you can reset some settings or disable extensions and themes that might be the source of the issue. By comparing Firefox behavior in normal mode to its behavior in Safe Mode with various items disabled, you may be able to diagnose issues.

Zoom into images?

Ok, maybe image zoom isn’t the hardest thing to do. With the use of either the Image Zoom or zoomFox extentions you can get up close and personal with any images you find on the Internet. With zoomFox the image is opened in a new tab which also contains a thumbnail view of the image used to scroll around more easily, zoom controls with various zoom levels. Image Zoom goes for a much more traditional way of doing things by letting you click to zoom in. Either are great extensions for browsing really big pictures or graphics.

Allow you to edit photos?

When it comes to photo editing, both Picture2Life and Picnik come to mind. These two extensions export your find to an Online image editor that will give you even more creative control than MS Paint. (like that was a hard thing to do) In all honesty though it is amazing how these Web 2.0 online applications stand up against some of the basic photo editor competition out there. With the resources they have it is hard to see how anybody else could do better than what these two extentions (+ services) offer.

Change the way you view your images?

There has been a lot of innovation when it comes to graphics and pictures via the browser too. FoxSaver is an extension that we have tackled here before that turns Firefox into a screen saver and photo viewer. Tossing in their support for media RSS and you have a winner. Another unique image extension out there is PicLens. It instantly transforms your browser into an full-screen slideshow experience.

Need a few more tasks for images that you can only get done with the help of an extension?

• Want to take detailed site screenshots? FireShots
• Miss the image toolbar from IE6? Image Toolbar
• Need a Bulk/Batch/Mass Image Uploader? ImageBot

What else do you do or need from you images?

Need more? Here is a little more information about this issue and fix via Mozilla Developer News:

Due to the security fixes, we strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you are still running Firefox 1.5.0.x, you are highly encouraged to upgrade to the Firefox 2 series as Mozilla ceased supporting Firefox 1.5.0.x in May 2007. Simply choose “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu to begin the upgrade process.

For more information about the problem, check out this post on CyberNet News about it. Also if you want – you can download and install it via GetFirefox.com.

This is actually a threat that I had considered once or twice before – but it seems like it is getting a little more “conversation” around the Web this time around. For the best description on what this security hole is all about – lets turn to CyberNet News.

So what’s the problem? When using an extension in Firefox it frequently checks to see if there is a more updated version available, and Firefox will notify the user whether they are running the latest version. Normally the user will agree to the update and proceed with their normal browsing activities, but there could be more going on behind the scenes than the user is actually aware of.

Looks like Firefox isn’t looking to fix this yet till version 3 of the browser rolls out. Folks like Google though have promised to fix any issues with their extensions as soon as they can. All we can hope is that others will follow suit.

For some reason I don’t like to have a lot on my taskbar. I think it would be really neat if someone would develop a Firefox plugin to read data from the mlb gameday servers and popup a summary window similar to what the Cingular minuteminder plugin does. The ideal plugin would effectively minimize the gameday window into a summary bar similar to the minuteminder and foxytunes plugins, and it would open the gameday window in a popup on mouseover just like minuteminder.

I don’t think there are any extensions out there smart enough to know, “Ok it is Friday, time to show this extension” but I do have one for you that will help you organize your status bar woes. Check out the rightfully named Organize Status Bar extension.

It should help you at least gain some control over your messy status bar in your favorite browser.

Bonus! Here is another solution! StatusBars