Visualise Firefox loading progress in address bar
I have discovered a very nice Firefox extension named Fission over at the Firefox Mastery website which -- the website -- deals with all things Firefox.
Fission is a Firefox add-on that displays the loading progress of a website in the address bar of Firefox. It uses transparent colors to visualize the loading progress and I have to admit that I really love the way it looks and displays the progress to you.
Update: The extensions mentioned in this article are no longer available. We suggest you check out Load Progress Bar instead which is compatible with all recent versions of Firefox. End
The Firefox browser itself is not displaying a progress meter when it loads websites. While you do get loading indicators, you may want to get a loading progress bar instead.
Some options can be changed to make the extension even more appealing. This may be important to you if you have installed a custom theme in the browser for example, or modified the browser UI using styles.
You can change the color of the progress indicator.It is unfortunate that the color choice is somewhat limit though.
Instead of using a solid color, you can also pick an image that you want used instead.
The only other options available are to move the progress bar to the right of the address bar, and display the connection status at the right of the address bar.
Update: fission is not compatible with the most recent versions of the Firefox browser. The extension has not been updated since 2009, and its author suggests that you use the Status-4-Evar extension instead.
The extension offers an impressive set of features. One of the features that it makes available is to display the loading progress in the location bar.
You can display a small line there, or fill the full address bar with a color of your choosing. Instead of using a color, you can also use an image just like Fission offered.
Additionally, it is also possible to set X and Y offets for the image, or switch to the custom style editor that allows you to style the progress indicator using CSS styles.
Status-4-Evar can also display a progress meter in another Firefox toolbar,
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Imagine Opera not having plugins at all. Oh, right.
Nice.
Now imagine Opera having this option in a default version w/o plugins :-O
OPERA FTW !!! ;)
Not sure of the value of this eye candy.
Something more useful is Fasterfox which has a page load timer that displays in the status bar. I find this to be very useful.
http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/
I’ve been using Fission for a while, it enabled me to save the space taken by my status bar. Great extension. By the way, the colour can be changed, in about:config, under extensions.fission.color.