Sander van Dragt

Google Chrome is too dominating, this is not good for the web. So I'm switching back to Firefox, but it can be pretty ugly by default in places.

I like to apply the following tweaks to make it pretty again:

Increase the Address Bar font size

Edit userChrome.css to make style changes to the Firefox UI. My Profile is located at %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Gibberish>, use the previous link to find the location on your system. Inside your profile create a chrome folder and inside that create a userChrome.css. Add the following line:

#urlbar { font-size: 13px; }

The possibilities are endless but this does the trick for me. Restart Firefox after saving the file.

Remove unwanted buttons and the searchbox

Right click on any of the toolbar buttons > Customize... to bring up the Customize Firefox screen. Remove unused buttons and the search box (search via the address bar instead) by dragging them to the Additional Tools and Features panel --  or the hamburger menu panel to access them with a click.

Make the tabs square again

Firefox tabs have this rounded look to them, which I find displeasing: install the Squared Australis Tabs addon to add square corners instead.

Hide the menu bar

Did you know you can access the menu bar by pressing the Alt key on your keyboard? The menu bar is visible by default but it is not frequently accessed, so press Alt+V or bring up the View menu bar menu and untick the Menu Bar and optionally the Bookmark Toolbar items.

Hide bookmark toolbar item names

You can blank out the Name of a bookmark to have it display just the icon in the toolbar, which tidies up those frequently accessed sites.

#web

Update: ChromEdit Plus can no longer be installed because it's not signed, please see You too Can Improve Firefox.

For a long time I have been wanting to switch to Firefox as my main browser. I haven’t done so before today because I didn’t like two things: The font-size of the address bar, and having a seperate search box.

Today I’ll show you how to fix these issues.

Fix Address bar font-size: Install the ChromEdit Plus addon. Then, under Tools > ChromEdit Plus > ChromEdit add the following code to the userChome.css:


#urlbar { font-size: 16px; }


Press the Save and Restart buttons. Afterwards you can disable this addon.

Remove the search box: right click on a toolbar > Customise. Drag the searchbox into the Customise Toolbar dialog to remove it from the UI.

#web