header2.gif

It’s been a while since I got a new monitor, so I’ve been stuck with a 15 incher. Sure it’s adequate, but sometimes I wish it just had more screen real estate. Since a lot of what I do involves Firefox, I decided to optimize it to get more screen space. And Since I’m feeling daring, I’ve decided to use Firefox 3 beta 2 for the project because it’s more of a lean mean browser than the old one. So here we go.

What you need

So first lets start with getting Firefox 3 and a few programs. I started by getting Personal Menu so I can hide the menu bar, and access it from a small button. Then I got myself ChromeEdit plus to auto-hide buttons and the bookmark bar when not needed. Now that we have the tools, let’s get cracking.

Personal Menu

Now, after you restarted your Firefox, we’re going to do a few tweak using Personal Menu. So right click anywhere in the tool bar to get the context menu. Then click the Menu Tool bar so that it disappears. If they give you some warning or message, just click ok. Now we’re going to replace the menu bar with a button. Right click again but click “customize…” this time. Now drag Menu and History to your tool bar for quick access. Also tick the “use small icons”. Then click the new menu button on your toolbar and click edit this menu. Below is my personal settings that I use for my menu button. Feel free to choose your own, but add ChromeEdit Plus for now, because you are going to need it later. The history button will give you quick access to your previously closed tabs. For me this is a priority, I seem to always close tabs by accident.

 

1.jpg

 

2.jpg

 

3.jpg

4.jpg

ChromeEdit Plus

 After you’ve finished with that, lets move on and customize the gui using ChromeEdit Plus. Click your menu and hover over ChromeEdit Plus and click ChromeEdit. Now copy and paste the following codes that I compiled from lifehacker. Be careful when you use the auto hide, every time you hover over the address bar, it will push the web page down which may annoy some of you. There are more hacks, but I feel this are the important one, and because of our Personal Menu add-on, it is unneeded.

/* ################################################## */

/* Pop-up bookmarks toolbar */

#PersonalToolbar {display: none;} #navigator-toolbox:hover > #PersonalToolbar {display: -moz-box;}

/* Remove Back button when there’s nothing to go Back to */

#back-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }

/* Remove Forward button when there’s nothing to go Forward to */

#forward-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }

/* Remove Stop button when there’s nothing to Stop */

#stop-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }

/* ################################################## */

 

5.jpg

 

6.jpg

Conclusion

And that’s it, you’ve successfully created some more room for your browser. Isn’t it beautiful? If you want even more, you can also hide the status bar by clicking view > status bar. Personally, I like to know where a link leads to. I mean I wouldn’t want to click a fake, or a 2girlsand1cup link :) . Oh noes, did you click it?

So what do you think? Do you have any hacks to get more screen real-estate? Share with us below.

P.S

Remember if you ever need your menu back, you can always click Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S on your keyboard. Also if you want to edit your “new” menu some more, you can do so by clicking Tools > Add-on > Personal Menus > Option.

Popularity: 1% [?]