Running out of room across the top of the Firefox browser window? Why not try adding a few things to the side instead? The Vertical Toolbar add-on for Firefox will help you organize your browser by adding an additional toolbar to the far right side of the browser window.
Tag Archives | toolbars
Utilize More Browser Screen Space with FlexBar
Finding your browsing to be a little cramped? Want some room to stretch your legs or just see more of the web page you might be currently visiting? FlexBar, a new add-on for Firefox, will give you all the screen space saving tools and resources you need at the touch of a button.
Once FlexBar has been installed, you can very easily configure the visibility of all your menu bars, sidebars, and information bars in Firefox. You can choose to always show, never show or just hide any toolbar in the Firefox interface too.
How to Hide the Firefox GUI
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.
Not All Toolbars Are Evil
Having seen the phase of toolbar upon toolbar come our way in this browsing generation, many have been labeled as evil space wasters that must be done away with. However, I do have to say not ever toolbar out there is evil. Now I don’t think you should ever become this crazy, but used in the right way they can be handy.
Look at these handy toolbars you can add to Firefox:
- Forecastfox – Get international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com, and display it in any toolbar or statusbar with this highly customizable and unobtrusive extension.
- Google Toolbar – Ok, I haven’t really used the Google Toolbar in half a decade, however it does still have a few handy things about it.
- Fire.fm – It gives you access to the extensive music library on Last.fm. Last.fm gives free radio to the US, UK, and Germany, plus subscriber-based service to the rest of the world. Listen to your favorite music and discover new artists in the process.
- Web Developer Toolbar – The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
So see – not every toolbar is bad. Are there any more toolbars you really enjoy? Don’t be afraid, share with the rest of us in the comments.
Add Another Bookmarks Toolbar to Firefox
Have more than a few bookmarks you want to keep handy on the bookmarks toolbar in Firefox but don’t have the room? Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar, an extension for Firefox, will help you solve that issue by letting you add as many bookmark toolbars as you need.
Once installed, the options here are simple. You can enable or disable the multiple bookmark rows, and you can also set the max number rows to display. If it doesn’t exactly match up with your current theme or you want to tweak it some, check out this post from the mozillazine.org forums.
If you need more bookmark room in the browser, this add-on will do the trick. You can pick it up on the Firefox Add-ons site.
Want to Create a Firefox 3 Theme?
Some time ago, I told you about my favorite tutorial for people wanting to know how to build their own Firefox theme. I am happy to say that the twisted-one himself, TwisterMc has updated his digital class in Firefox design to cover Firefox 3.
There are a few requirements, such as getting your own unique UUID, giving TwisterMc some credit, and coming up with something original – but those are easily done in exchange for the knowledge you will be receiving.
Some of the tutorials covered are:
- Packaging Firefox Themes
- Creating Your Themes’ Identity & Install Files
- Graphics Editing for Firefox Themes
- Custom Firefox Toolbar Buttons
- Customizing Toolbar Backgrounds
- Submitting Your Theme to Mozilla
- Customize Firefox’s Scrollbar
- Changing Fonts & Colors in Firefox Themes
- User Generated Q&A
Check it all out here:
Big thanks to TwisterMc for updating this for all of us to enjoy. Know of anymore theme resources or tutorials out there?
Gallery of Firefox Toolbar Customizations
Well, I put out the request to one and all to see what you have done to customize Firefox, and I got tons of responses. It is always interesting to see how others are using Firefox to fit their needs – and how creative people get when it comes to moving around the basic toolbars and general interface of the browser.
Here are the best of the bunch! Thanks to everybody who submitted!
via Twister MC
via Kaitlin
via Eren
How Have You Customized Firefox?
Give me your Firefox screenshots!
One of the best things about Firefox is that we can customize it to no end, and thus far – no other browser on the market has been able to stack up with that fact. So I am curious, how have you customized Firefox to fit your needs? How have you organized your toolbars and icons?
I’ll start things off by showing you my current browser setup:
As you can see I like to keep it pretty simple, and I am rocking the Chromiefox theme right now. Send me your Firefox screenshots (to mitch@mitchkeeler.com), or post a link here in the comments to them. If anything else, we might pick up a few customization tips from one another. I’ll save the best for a round up for a later date and time.
Remove the Toolbar Clutter
By design, Firefox is pretty easy to customize as far as the toolbars on the top go. You just have to right click on some empty space up there, then choose “Customize”. From there you can drag things off the Firefox toolbars or add them. Two options are not so easily edited though. That would be the “Go” button and the magnifying glass.
To remove these two, you will need to edit your UserChrome.css file and add these entries to the bottom.
Remove the Go Button:
#go-button-stack, .search-go-button-stack {
display: none !important;
}
Remove the “Search” Button:
/*Remove magnifying glass button from search box*/
.search-go-button-stack { display: none !important; }
Now when your done, restart Firefox and you now have a little more room freed up where those buttons used to be.
This is a classic Firefox 2 tip that makes me wonder if it will still exist with Firefox 3 looming around the corner?
Can I Customize Firefox’s Toolbars?
Sick with that default way your icons look and you want to change things around a ‘bit? It is easy enough to do if you know where to look. Heck you could pretty much remove everything above your tab bar if you wanted to. The easiest way to customize your toolbar space would be to right-click on it and then click on the “Customize…” menu option.
From there everything is pretty easy to figure out. You can drag things into the box that pops up to remove them, and then click an drag things out of the box and into the menu to add them to the toolbar. On the bottom of that popup box you see a few other options as well.
The drop down box gives you the option to show just the icons, icons and text descriptions or just the text. If you don’t like the pretty icons, go hardcore and use the text only options. Personally I am an “icons only” kind of guy.
I don’t use the space and flexable space very much. They will help you push some of your icons around to the far left or far right if you need them to be there. The seperator will help you put little bars between your icons and toolbar spaces so things look nice and neat.
All the other icons you see there should be fairly familiar. If you have installed a few extensions, you might also see buttons for them there that you can drag over to your toolbar space.
Next thing you see if a check box option for using small icons. I have this one checked as well, because by doing so it shrinks my buttons down and gives me more toolbar space to work with. That’s more room for adding other neat buttons and options up there. It also helps to give you a little more viewing space where your Web sites are displayed too.
There is a button to add a new toolbar too. Use this if you need a new spot to expand all your buttons and options to. The last option you see here is for the folks that try to customize but end up messing things up and they don’t know how to go back.
Just hit the “Restore Default” button and everything will go back to the way it looked when you first installed Firefox (well, toolbar and icon positions anyways).
