Everyone loves Firefox, it’s the browser of browsers. I need not explain why, one would think the reasons for switching were obvious. However, the default interface for it is rather, lets say, bulky. I’m a minimalistic person; I like everything on my computer to be organised and simple. My desktop consists of three icons, my music is located in one folder. In fact, you could say my whole hard drive is like a carefully sorted filing cabinet. It’s not OCD, I hope, I just like it that way.

So, intrigued? In this article I’m going to explain how you can achieve a perfect, more streamlined looking browser, whilst retaining those vital features we’ve known to grow and love. To give a taste of the action, take a look at the finished product

So, how do we achieve this result? How do you streamline Firefox into a minimalistic-yet-functional machine of brilliance? Read on and I’ll show you the way.

Part 1: Trim the fat

As mentioned above, the default interface is fat, bulky and space absorbing. It’s like standing in a glass elevator with an obese person and trying to look outside. By simply using the customise tool we can perform a tad of liposuction to trim it into shape. To start, go to Views -> Toolbar -> Customise

Now, we’re simply going to click and drag all the items to the top bar of the interface. Basically rendering the two ‘toolbars’ below useless.

Seeing as we don’t need those toolbars anymore, it’s best to get rid of them and free up some space. Simple uncheck the items in View -> Toolbars.

Feeling a bit better already? Thought as much. Now the next bit is to your own personal preference, personally I find the size of the icons intrusive and space wasting. So, to get them to a more manageable size, open the customise dialog (View->Toolbars->Customise) and check “use small icons”

Minimum effort and a job well done, now we’re ready to move onto the finer points of streamlining Firefox.

Part 2: Wrinkle Decrease Botox Injections

Firefox comes with many stupid, unneeded buttons/features that can be removed without removing function. One of these is the ‘go’ button. Who uses it? Who physically types the address in, moves the mouse and clicks Go? I’m yet to find anyone who does that, the enter key is by far the more efficient method. So, let’s get rid of it.

Type about:config into the address bar and hit enter (obviously). You’ll be greeted by a mass array of values that control various aspects of Firefox. A configuration file, as it says on the tin. Type into the ‘filter bar’ at the top: -

browser.urlbar.hideGoButton

You probably won’t have to actually type all of that, each character you input filters the results until your find the one you want. Double click this value to set it to true.

Gone, like a flash.

Now, we’re going to remove that ghastly, ghastly search button magnifying glass in the top right of your screen. Again, an unessacery addition to the interface that can be removed. To do this we do a bit of userChrome editing.

Navigate yourself to

C:\Documents and Settings\(yourname)\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\(profilenumber)\chrome

Fire up “userChrome.css” with your favourite text editor and paste the following at the bottom.

/*Remove magnifying glass button from search box*/

.search-go-button-stack { display: none !important; }

Save the file and restart Firefox. Say bye to that stupid button.

Part 3: Fitting a corset

Finally we’re going to squeeze our browser to perfection. First stop, the back/forward buttons. When you visit a website, is really necessary to have them there? You only need them when you move forward a page and visa versa. Well, to fix this, I’ve found a method that allows the buttons to appear dynamically depending on whether there are pages to move to. It even reacts to each individual tab you have open.

Fire open “userChrome.css” again and paste the following at the bottom: -

/* Remove back button if there is nothing to go back to */
#back-button[disabled=”true”] { display: none; }
/* Remove forward button if there is nothing to go forward to */
#forward-button[disabled=”true”] { display: none; }

Save the file and restart Firefox. Notice the brilliance of this little trick?

Second stop. The menu entries. Do you really need them all visible? After all, it’s wasting valuable address bar space. Lets cut it down to a manageable size. To do this we use an extension called TinyMenu, install it (restart firefox, unfortunately) and it’ll incorporate your whole menu into one manageable menu.

If like me you like your bookmarks immediately available, fire open Tools -> Add ons and click the options button for Tiny Menu. This lets you configure the menu to see what’s displayed.

Perfect, and that resolves my tutorial for today. I hope you enjoy the new, better looking more compact browser, if anyone has any further tips, feel free to comment!