ultimate geek girl

Last week, I walked you through how to edit the about:config in your Firefox browser to remove some elements and have a more tidy looking toolbar.

This week, I want to show you a couple of easy ways to save more screen real estate by using one nifty plugin and editing Firefox’s toolbars.

First, install the Tiny Menu plugin. This plugin will compress your menu from File, Edit, View, etc. to a simple drop down Menu, which saves valuable screen real estate. See a view of the Tiny Menu in action to the right.

(Don’t forget to restart your browser!)

Second, right click on a blank space on your toolbar and select “Toolbar Properties”. Make sure “Icons only” and “Small icons” are selected. These two options save the most space on your Firefox toolbars.

Now, you want to edit your toolbars by right clicking on the toolbar and dragging and dropping icons wherever you’d like. Some people like to have lots of icons, but I like to keep it simple with bookmarks, print and addons. I removed the Activity Indicator because each tab shows me its loading progress, so why duplicate the function?!?!

Don’t forget to deselect the toolbars that you have now emptied. If you have removed everything from the Bookmarks Toolbar, deselect it by right clicking on a blank space on the toolbar area and clicking on the name of the toolbar that is now empty. This stops empty toolbars from being displayed - so you can really appreciate your hard work!

You will always have one toolbar that you cannot remove - and if you need to, you can always reset the toolbars back to their original format.

Additionally, if you don’t want or need the forward/back or other navigation buttons because you know the Firefox keyboard shortcuts, or you want to learn the shortcuts, feel free to remove those icons, too!

The best thing about tweaking the toolbars is that you can always reset everything back to its original settings and try again, or continue to add, move and remove buttons until you get the right combination for yourself.

Here’s a shot of the second half of a toolbar that has been modified. See that the bookmarks have been condensed? That’s a simple trick that you can use by navigating to Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks. Depending on how well you organize your bookmarks, you will see “Bookmarks Toolbar Folder” and your bookmarks saved underneath this drop down.

1. Create a new folder called “Bookmarks” and drag and drop all of your existing bookmarks and bookmark folders into this folder.
2. Navigate to Edit > Set as Bookmarks Toolbar Folder. Once you click on it, your bookmarks toolbar will automatically update.

If you have a lot of folders and just a few loose URLs, like the screenshot above, you will see a major difference in how much space your bookmarks take up on your screen!

It is possible to tweak your toolbars down to just one bar across the top of your screen - which gives you maximum viewing area - perfect for people with smaller screens or just like the minimalist features that come from tweaking your Firefox toolbars!

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Tags: Firefox, Geek Girl, How to, Open Source Software, Software, Web Browser