About five years ago, Lifehacker published an article about how to remove a lot of clutter from the toolbars of Firefox 2.something (one commenter asked about doing it in Firefox 3 beta 4). Much of it is outdated, but some of the hacks still work and are very much worth doing, especially if you use Portable Firefox on small(er) screens. (This works for regular, locally-installed Firefox as well, it just requires the extra step of locating your profile.)
For Portable Firefox, you want to open the PortableApps.com Platform menu (any version) and hit Explore (or right-click the tray icon and choose Explore). Browse to PortableApps, then FirefoxPortable, then Data, then Profile.
Do you have a Chrome folder? I don't. If you don't have one, create one, and make a new text file called userChrome.css (not userChrome.css.txt).
If you do have a Chrome folder, it should contain a file called userChrome-Example.css. Go ahead and make a copy of it, and rename the copy to userChrome.css.
Open the userChrome.css file and add the following lines:
/* 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 the Edit and Help menus
Id's for all toplevel menus:
file-menu, edit-menu, view-menu, go-menu, bookmarks-menu, tools-menu, helpMenu */
#helpMenu, #edit-menu { display: none !important; }
The comments should explain what they do. When you start Firefox, you will not have Back or Forward buttons; those only show up when there's something to go back or forward to. And the last one removes the Help and Edit menus. They aren't there. Gone. (They don't really have anything important in them anyway.) (This hack may not work in Vista or Win7.)
If any of those options are a problem, just remove that section; the others will work independently.
And obviously, this isn't something everybody should do (though, it's something anybody can).
Now, if only I could get my Firefox button (including in WinXP), tabs, back/forward, and address and search bars all on one line, I'd be set...
Visit the Community page
Join our forums
Subscribe to our email newsletter
Subscribe with RSS
Follow us on BlueSky
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on LinkedIn
Follow us on Mastodon
Follow us on Twitter
You can do all of this and more with Stylish (for Firefox and/or Chrome [though Chrome has a different UI and I don't think app styles will work]), and I find it a little easier to go to click the Stylish button, click "Manage styles...", and enable/disable a style I have, or write a new style from there than to dig into userChrome.css and restart FireFox every time I want to change something.
With stylish you can share your userstyles on UserStyles.org, and find many styles others have made for individual sites (site styles), to work across all sites (global styles), or to edit Firefox's UI (app styles) [like what you're talking about in the above post].
Also I don't know when it happened, but the history menu's ID is now
history-menunotgo-menu, and the bookmarks menu's ID is nowbookmarksMenunotbookmarks-menu(at least on Windows with FF4)I've made the userChrome.css file you posted above into a Stylish Style just to demonstrate.
You can just copy and paste it into a new blank style.
(also I corrected those menu IDs, and changed the comment slightly)
@namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul); /* Remove unwanted menus Comment out the menus you do want */ /* #file-menu, */ #edit-menu, /* #view-menu, #history-menu, #bookmarksMenu, #tools-menu, */ #helpMenu { display: none !important; } /* 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; }Enjoy.
Edit: Oh, and also you can move your toolbar items around all you want if you RightClick on the TabBar and click "Customize...", but you can only have other items on the same line as the FireFox button when Maximized (at least on WinXP).
~3D1T0R
I have Stylish at home. When I get on PortableApps.com at home, pretty much everything that is red, is blue. It's much easier on the eyes.
At work, I'm on an old P4 single-core rig, so I try to tax it as little as possible. So Stylish doesn't make the cut. But you're right, Stylish does make it easier.
And thanks for updating the menu items. I blogged about that, and thus gave outdated information. But like I said, that information came from 2006. Firefox 2 maybe?
I definitely know about Customize.
And unless I'm missing something, there is no Firefox button in Windows XP, just Vista and Win7. I'm on WinXP right now and I do not see one, just the old style with the menus. I'd like to get the new style in XP, but I worry it might tax this poor old P4.
You can use menu bar or Firefox button in any version of Windows - just the menu bar is disabled by default in Vista/7 and enabled by default in 2000/XP. Right click on the menu bar and untick "Menu bar".
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
That's awesome. And it actually looks... well, decent, in XP. Orange and blue don't go so well together, but an extra 3/4" of screen real estate is nice.
I don't miss the menus. The Firefox button duplicates all/most menu functionality anyway.
Menus are on the way out. Apps with few menu options can use a button like Firefox or Opera. Apps with a lot of menu options can use a Ribbon.
Disabling the Menu Bar is the only way to enable the Firefox Button (that I know of anyway). Perhaps at some point in the future that will change, but for now, just right click on your Menu Bar, and uncheck the "Menu Bar" option, and as the Menu Bar disappears, p00f‼ you'll have a Firefox Button at the top-left corner of your Firefox window.
And if you'd like to have both, the only way I've found is to disable the Menu Bar, and then add a Stylish style (or remove the @namespace line for adding to the userChrome.css style) which says the following:
@namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul); /*Make the Menu Bar show whether it's enabled, or disabled*/ #toolbar-menubar { min-height : 20px !important; }Note: Personally I'd like to have a check-box for "Firefox Button", and for "Menu Bar", and if they don't want someone to be able to accidentally remove both, then they could make it so that when you uncheck one of them it automatically checks the other. ☺
Edit: I found an interesting Stylish Style that lets you have the TabBar in your TitleBar (same bar as the Firefox Button) when not Maximized, it also makes the Firefox Button have a Firefox Logo rather than saying "Firefox". It's called Firefox 4 Menu Button with icon+(Tabs in Titlebar), and you might notice that you have to choose what Icon you want, and if you want and whether you want the TabBar in the TitleBar or not, etc. I should probably look into how they do that ☺.
Enjoy.
~3D1T0R