Patrick Micka

HowTo: The Minimalist’s Firefox

How To

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Recently I read about an interesting Mozilla feature that allows users to create custom collections of add-ons to share with other users. Essentially making this post much easier for me to write now that I don’t have to drone on and on about which add-ons I use to streamline my favorite browser’s interface. I usually have about 20 tabs open at time and a lot of these are must-haves to make sense of everything. This group of plugins is a sure fire way to trim the fat off your Firefox browser. Also, for those of you lucky enough to own a netbook, they make browsing the web much easier on the eyes by maximizing the viewable content area. See the full post for even more space saving tips.

Minimalist’s Collection – A set of add-ons to streamline your browser without compromising usability.

5 More Ways to Slim Your Browser

Here’s a list of 5 tricks I use in conjunction with the add-ons I’ve collected that will put your browser on the road to minimalist zen — and it looks great too!

1. Remove the names from your bookmark toolbar – This allows you to keep many more bookmarks for quick access just a click away without sacrificing anything. Any website worth it’s salt should have a unique favicon which is as good as having a list of names.
2. Remove the activity indicator from your toolbar – The activity indicator is the tiny icon on the top right of your browser window that animates every time you load a new page. You don’t really need it. Right click one of your menus and select “Customize…” then drag it back into the box containing all the other buttons you don’t need.
3. Get rid of navigation buttons you don’t really need – Learn easy to remember Firefox hotkeys and save yourself the trouble of having to reach for the mouse every 5 seconds if you really don’t have to. I remove the Stop and Refresh buttons, but there’s no reason to stop there. At the very least make sure you’ve turned on the “Use Small Icons” option.
4. Consolidate your toolbars – This is one of the best ways to save space. You don’t need toolbars taking over your browser. After installing the Tiny Menu add-on listed in my collection move everything from the navigation toolbar up to the top, which is always displayed, and get rid of the empty space afterword by displaying only the bookmarks toolbar. Less is more!
5. Choose a theme that makes the most of your new layout – An important part of being happy about how you’ve setup your browser includes having it look nice. The NASA Night Launch Theme works best for me, but for those of you who enjoy a lighter theme, try the Elementary Theme.

The lesson here is that one of the great things about tweaking your browser and making it work for you is that there are other people out there wanting to do the same thing. So if you have any space saving tricks to add please share them in the comments section!