Customize the Firefox 4 Interface With a Few Simple Tweaks

Firefox two is expected to bring of the most significant stylistic overhauls that the browser has undertaken since the preliminary transition from the elderly Mozilla suite.

Although the final release is still a few weeks away, we have already had a taste of its look & feel thanks to the seven betas pushed out so far. Firefox 4's UI is simplistic & streamlined but it's also drawn criticism for dropping elements like page titles in the title bar or basically for being Chrome-like.

Let's start with the obvious. Firefox two UI Fixer is a handy add-on that introduces several fascinating modifications to the browser's user interface, including the choice to move the orange Firefox menu button so that the page title is displayed again, or restoring the "New Tab" option to tab context menu.

Make that ugly orange menu button movable & more
It also lets you move status bar icons from extensions to any location, which can be useful in the event you only use a handful of extensions & hate to see all that wasted space from the add-on bar at the bottom of your screen. Basically relocate those icons next to the awesome bar, for example.

The add-on works on the latest check versions of Firefox (from b7 onwards) and has been tested across all platforms. To personalize your Firefox UI go to Add-ons then in the Options dialog select the desired options. Needless to say, Mozilla may still have some minor changes in store when the final version of Firefox three debuts, but with Firefox three UI Fixer covering plenty of different areas of the UI under a single add-on they are sure this will stay handy for sometime to come.

Disable the new tab button
Firefox offers an additional way to open new tabs with a tiny + icon at the finish of your open tabs bar. I not very ever use this button. If you are already more comfortable with another way of opening tabs, such as using the Ctrl+T keyboard shortcut or double-clicking on an empty tab area, you may require to get rid of this option and save some space (every bit counts when you are switching between dozens of open tabs). All it takes is a  

simple userChrome.css file tweak:
 

Go to the chrome folder inside your profile listing (the simplest way is to enter about:support on your Firefox address bar, then click on the Open Containing Folder next to Profile Listing and find the chrome folder).
Unless you have made other tweaks before there ought to be a file called userChrome-example.css. Open it, add the line .tabs-newtab-button {display: none;} and save as userChrome.css.
Restart Firefox and the new tab button ought to be gone.

Move or disable the close tab button

If you want to take things a step further it's also possible to save a few pixels by keeping the close tab button from appearing on each open tab. You just need to do a little editing in your about:config page.

1. Enter “about:config” on your Firefox address bar and type browser.tabs.closeButtons in the filter box.
2. From there you can double click the entry and set any value between 0 and 3.

Setting it to ‘0’ will mean only the active tab has a close button. The default setting ‘1’ sees a close button on each tab, ‘2’ on none of them and ‘3’ also on none of them but places a close button to the right-end of the tab bar.