Browsing space is important; especially for smaller netbook PCs out there.  So, why have the menu bar, bookmark bar and navigation bar shown if you don’t need them?  The Hide GUI bars extension for Firefox will let you hide all three, or bring them back with one single keyboard combination.

Once the Hide GUI bars add-on is installed, customizing it to fit your needs is pretty self explanatory.  In the options you can choose which toolbars get hidden:

• Menu Bar
• Navigation Bar
• Tab Bar
• Bookmarks Bar
• Status Bar

Next, you just choose the keyboard combination you wish to use to hide or show all the Firefox toolbars.

How to Hide Toolbars Manually in Firefox

Can you do this without the use of the Hide GUI bars add-on? Yes, but it is a little more complicated.  One of the new features in Firefox 3.6 is the ability to hide the menu bar.  The navigation bar and bookmarks bar were already hide-able before this most recent release. To hide them, just right-click one of the toolbars, and uncheck the one you wish to hide:

You can pick up the Hide GUI bars add-on for Firefox on the Firefox add-ons web site.

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.

Tis’ the season to be getting more Mozilla and Firefox news than I can handle!  Here are some of the most recent Firefox headlines to catch my eye.

Firefox for Windows Mobile images surface

But Mozilla says a Windows Mobile version of Fennec is on its way and that an Alpha release could come within the next few weeks. And now a few screenshots have surfaced which would seem to indicate that at least someone is already running Fennec on a Windows Mobile phone.

Firefox 3.1 to Include Smarter Session Restore

The nightly builds of Firefox 3.1 have added a significant improvement to the session restore dialog you normally see after a crashed browsing session. The upshot: Rather than displaying a modal dialog that requires you to restore your old session or start from scratch, Firefox will display an about:sessionrestore tab in which you can selectively disable any tab or window from the previous session before you continue with the restore.

Mozilla announces Developer Tools Labs

Ajaxian founders, Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith, are joining the Mozilla Corporation as full time employees to lead the new Developer Tools Labs, a project similar to Mozilla Labs that will focus on researching and developing “tools that increase developer productivity, enable compelling user experiences, and promote the use of open standards.”, said Mozilla’s Chris Beard in a blog post.

Mozilla locks in Firefox 3.1 feature list

Three weeks ago, the company said it would insert four to five more weeks into the timetable, part of a reaction to changes in the browser market, including the introduction by Google Inc. of its Chrome browser. Then, Mozilla said it would probably use the time to add a privacy mode and to punch up its TraceMonkey JavaScript engine performance.  A private browsing mode and fast JavaScript execution were touted by Google last month when it launched Chrome.

You’ve arrived in a new city, a new continent, a new coffee shop. You don’t really know where you are, and are looking for a good place to eat. You pull out your laptop, fire up Firefox, and go to your favorite review site. It automatically deduces your location, and serves up some delicious suggestions a couple blocks away and plots directions there.

It sounds to me a lot like what people had hoped Google would do with their Android phones, except Mozilla here isn’t talking about ad space yet. 

How can this be done?  It is in part thanks to the new W3C Geolocation Specification which, in turn, adds the ability for web sites to request and users to provide their locations.  It would/could be done a number of different ways such as GPS, WiFi, entering the details yourself, and so on.

If this tickles your fancy, you can download the Geode add-on for Firefox or just check out Mozilla Labs for more of the inside dirt on the idea.

It shares some of the look and feel of Firefox 3 so you have to believe that with that being said that the gui-feeling they are delivering with the new browser will be used maybe for a few more versions down the road.

As long as they can keep it simple – and functional Mozilla will have yet another winner on their hands.  I am curious to see though what will be that one feature that really draws mobile surfers in.  The one thing that nobody else does right that Mozilla does do.

More info on the Mobile Firefox Previews:

• Mobile Firefox first steps
• They Shrunk My Firefox! Mozilla Shows off Mobile Mockups
• Mobile Firefox Mockups

Baker says developers are working on a mobile browser, but says it’s a long term goal and nothing users should expect to see anytime soon. While the Minimo project is based on Mozilla, it isn’t an official product and it’s still a few (dozen) steps behind Opera Mobile when it comes to speed and performance.

It might be a lot of promise and “maybe” right now, but if it does happen I have a feeling that the people using Opera’s mobile browser will feel like the ones using the desktop Opera. Lonely.

Related Reading: Download Squad | Interview with Mitchell Baker

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