The new Firefox extension Replacement adds a fourth option. It adds a Replace button to the Firefox interface that activates a custom mode. It is then possible to remove interface elements from the web browser by hovering the mouse over them, and selecting the hide option that appears after a short time.

The extension can hide all elements that have their own unique ID. This includes most interface elements like the bookmarking button, close tab button, show all tabs button, minimize button of the Firefox window and even most of the toolbars of the browser.

Just select the hide option to remove a button or toolbar from the Firefox interface. That’s easier than having to add the right custom CSS code to the userchrome.css file. An option to reset the changes is available as well. All you need to do is to right-click the Replace button and left-click the reset option to reset all changes. There is no option to reset only one element so that it appears again in the interface. This means that you will have to start all over again if you make a single mistake that you want to correct.

Replacement has a second option: You can use it to translate interface elements into a different language. A translate option is displayed if you activate Replace and move the mouse cursor over text in the browser interface. These changes are only temporarily on the other hand, a page reload removes them again. It is not really clear why it has been added to the extension, as it is only temporary and completely independent from the removal of items in the interface.

The Replacement extension is handy for Firefox users who want to remove specific interface elements from the browser, especially if they do not have the time to search for a manual solution. The add-on is compatible with Firefox 4 and later, compatibility may has to be forced on Aurora and Nightly builds though.

Firefox 3.7 Pre-Alpha 6 was released yesterday by the developers. And while we would not recommend using it in a work environment it does showcase some of the recent interface changes that may make it into the beta and final builds.

Especially Windows Vista and Windows 7 users can enjoy the new Aero Glass interface. It does seem that the Firefox developers need to fine tune that interface a bit as it made the menu texts almost unreadable on certain backgrounds.

firefox 4 design

The tabbar now integrates some of the navigational toolbar elements. That’s in theory not a bad thing especially for users who like their browser header to be as small as possible. The elements at the right side of the tabbar however seemed to mess things up a little bit. Most users are used to seeing a close tab button there. Mozilla have now placed five buttons to the right of the tabbar of which two display an X.

Even more confusing is the fact that the rightmost X stops loading a page while the X on the left side of it closes the active tab.

The other buttons from left to right are reload, display all tabs and open a new tab. The layout of the buttons can be changed so that it is possible to move, remove and reorder the buttons.

The bookmarks toolbar does not seem to make use of Aero at all, the tabbar only if it is placed right underneath the menu bar.

Removing the menu bar from the layout will now display a single menu button in the browser’s interface, much what Opera have done in Opera 10.50.

firefox 4 menu bar

The latest Firefox 4 builds, still labeled as Firefox 3.7 currently, are available for all supported operating systems from the Mozilla ftp server.

If you analyse the elements of the Firefox header you notice that there is lots of free space there. That’s wasted space that could be put to much better use.

The following article is going to show how you can save more than 60% of that header space. It is not necessary to apply all the changes. If you feel that you need the title bar or the status bar then you are of course free to keep them. The article however will be radical and outline how to use minimal screen estate in Firefox.

All the changes outlined are applied by customizing the Firefox toolbars and installing several add-ons. Links are give when needed. Let us start:

Here is a picture of the default Firefox interface:

And here how it can look like after making the changes

The minimal interface combines several toolbars into one bar and removes the title and status bar. The status bar and the tab bar are set to automatically hide. They will appear when they are needed.

1. Install Tiny Menu

Tiny Menu compresses the Firefox menu that contains the File, Edit etc entries into one menu item that can be displayed as text or as an icon.

2. Merging the Navigation Toolbar with the Menu bar.

We are now starting to merge toolbars to get rid of some of them. A right-click on blank space in the Menu toolbar will open a menu with the option to customize. Select that option.

Now drag and drop all elements that you need from the Navigation Toolbar (Reload, Home, Stop, Address Bar and Google Search) to the right side of the menu bar.

3. Remove the Navigation Toolbar

The Navigation Toolbar should now only contain items that you have not moved to the Menu Bar. Right-click the bar and uncheck Navigation Toolbar from the context menu. This should remove that toolbar from Firefox and give us some valuable screen estate.

4. Merging the Bookmarks Toolbar with the Menu Bar

Right-click on a free space of the Menu Bar again and select customize. Now drag and drop the Bookmarks Toolbar Items to the Menu Bar and click on Done. This should clear the Bookmarks Toolbar from any items.

5. Disable the Bookmarks Toolbar

Now right-click on the Bookmarks Toolbar and uncheck it from the menu. This should remove the Bookmarks Toolbar from Firefox as well.

6. Autohide the Status Bar

We already removed two toolbars from Firefox and are half-way through. Install the Autohide Statusbar add-on for Firefox to automatically hide the Status Bar when it is not needed.

Update: Autohide Status bar is no longer needed, as Mozilla has changed the status bar in Firefox 4 and future versions of the browser. The status bar is hidden by default.

7. Disable the Title bar and move the captions to the menu bar

This one is optional. The title bar might be useful for several purposes. It is for instance used to move the window around on the screen. Once it is gone it cannot be moved anymore (only maximized, minimized). The size of the window can be altered but its position cannot be changed. The title bar is also displaying the title of the current website which might be helpful for some users.

Install the Hide Caption Titlebar Plus add-on for Firefox to remove the title bar.

8 Autohide the Firefox Tabs bar

This is another optional step as it seems that many users like to have a view of their tabs bar all the time. If you can live without it for most of the time you might want to consider putting it on auto hide. Moving the mouse into the area where it should be will display the tab bar.

The add-on had to be modified to work with the latest Firefox 3.04 build. You can download it directly here: hide_tab_bar_10dev3a

Now for comparison:

It might not be that easy in the first hours of working with the new interface. Not everything has to be implemented which means that it should be easy to create your very own minimized version of Firefox.

Please feel free to comment, ask or add to the article in the comments.