Remove main menu items in Firefox

You can use a quick CSS hack to remove unwanted – or unneeded -top menu items in Firefox to save space in the horizontal menu bar. I have been using only three of the seven available top level menus. The three that I’m using are the View, the Bookmarks and the Tools menu. I’ve never used the File, Edit, History or Help top level menu items.

You need to add some code to the file userChrome.css which is located in your Firefox profile folder. I suggest you search for the file because the path depends on your operating system.

Open userChrome.css in a text editor and add the following lines of code to it:

Funny and Cool Firefox Pictures

Firefox has such a dedicated user base that many cool and funny pictures are posted on many places on the Internet that are somehow related to Firefox. I though it would be nice to post those images here on the Firefox Mastery blog to entertain all you freaks out there that think that Firefox is something special.

The inspiration started with a post on the Firefox Facts blog that listed several images depicting Firefox. I soon began my journey to find more pictures and the following list is the result of this journey.

I hope you all enjoy the pictures.

One Password for all websites

A lot of users tend to use the same password or a few passwords for all the websites that they created user accounts for. I would bet that most users tend to use more usernames than passwords simply for the reason that usernames have to be unique on each website.

Password Hasher could probably become the most important extension for those users who want to increase the security but keep the few passwords that they have been using on all of those sites. The concept is pretty simple. Different passwords are generated from a master password and used as the password for the websites that the user is a member of.

The user needs to remember the master password – and only the master password – to login to the website in question. The great benefit is of course that the password that was generated for that website is unique and can’t be used to access accounts on other websites or in real life.

Change the Size of the Firefox Searchbar

The Firefox searchbar has a default size that can’t be changed in the options of Firefox. Many users however do not know that the searchbar can be altered using simple css code in the file userChrome.css. This file can be found in your Firefox profile folder. You can open it with any normal text editor.

Append the following code to the end of the file to change the default size of the Firefox searchbar. You might want to play around a bit with the number which means width in pixels. If you would add that code and restart Firefox afterwards the default size would increase to 400 pixels.

Display Loading Progress in Address Bar

I’m sometimes astonished that I never heard about a Firefox add-on before. Fission is one of those add-ons that add a real cool effect to Firefox. It displays the loading progress in the address bar of Firefox which means that it becomes more visible this way.

The display effect itself looks nice as well and can be customized further. The transparent color that is used to visualize the loading progress can be changed and an image can be used as well. Instead of using the full address area users can opt to only use the right side of it.

I prefer to use the full address bar location though because it does look nicer and it is at the same time easier to spot.

Improve the Autocomplete Feature of Firefox

To be honest I do not like the Firefox autocomplete feature which tries to match the url that you type in with urls that you have already visited. The Firefox Autocomplete Manager add-on adds functionality and comfort to autocomplete. It does match the phrase that you type against bookmarked items, page titles of websites that you have visited and even bookmark names.

While the autocomplete feature in Firefox matches the url from the beginning the improved autocomplete feature matches any part of the url which is great if you can remember part of the url only.

The add-on can be configured further to change sorting criteria, excluding pages and lots more. It does however use way to many resources in my opinion which is a shame if you consider the usefulness of this add-on. If you do have enough resources though you might want to use it anyway.