Minimize space with Firefox
Because of the netbook craze or just because you like seeing more of the web and less of the application it takes to view it, one might want to minimize the usage of screen space taken up by various firefox functions. Below are several tips for accomplishing this.
1. Uncheck the bookmarks and status bar.
Reason: The amount of people who use Firefox who NEVER add ANYTHING to the bookmarks bar is, quite frankly, astonishing. Furthermore the Firefox awesome bar (the url bar) can pull up your bookmarks when ever you type a work that is in the title or url of the bookmark.
Whether people just never see it, i don’t know! Either use it or lose it is my motto!
The status bar offers no real incentive to be kept on and below I’ll show how you can get the functionality of it back without taking up space.
2. Install AdBlock & Enable Blank Space Removal
This may sound like a weird one when discussing “space” but adverts that you’re not interested in seeing take up space.
Having blank spaces where ad’s would’ve been doesn’t help either, so make sure you enable “Collapse Blocked Elements” in the preferences menu to squash away all of the blank space.
3. Small Icons On The Taskbar
Next up i checked ‘Show Small Icons’ in the customize dialog.
Big icons are handy on small screens, but not at the expense of browsing – shortcut keys are far quicker, too.
4. Combine Stop/Reload
This is a logical move as well as a practical one.
Do you ever refresh a while a page is loading?! Or stop a static page? No. And if you do, then rarely.
All it takes to combine them is this user-script: http://mail.userstyles.org/styles/10
(You’ll need Stylish to use it.)
5. Omnibox & Fission
Omnibox merges the URL and Search box together – kind of like Google Chrome’s address/search bar.
Fission creates a “page loading” animation inside the URL bar like the browser ‘Safari’ has.
6. Tree Style Tab
Use this extension if you want to save on vertical space but don’t care much for the horizontal addition. Personally I find this an easier way to manage many mant tabs.
7. Hide Menu Bar
This extension is rather simple. Install it and your menu bar is now gone. Want to view the File, Edit or View menu for something? Simply press the Alt key.
After all is said and done, your browser will look like this:
Alternative:
An alternative to all of this would be to use the vimperator plugin for Firefox. This plugin gets rid of all visual controls and gives you a command bar at the bottom. With this you can control vimperator by vim keybindings.
Here’s a howto for vimperator: http://tuxtraining.com/2008/12/28/how-to-control-firefox-using-vim-keybindings
With vimperator you can expect your browser to look like this:
Related Posts
