However, I think Firefox development is heading in exactly the opposite direction that it (or any browser) should be going, imitating Google's Chrome browser, the popularity of which I do not understand. With version 4, Firefox's interface is becoming sleeker, like Chrome, but at the cost of user-friendliness and actual usability (although for the record, Chrome is still the uncontested champ for a user-unfriendly interface).
Firefox 4 won't be my primary browser any time soon, as I'm instead sticking with Firefox 3.6. But I am using Firefox 4 Portable for testing and such, and have put together a few simple changes to make Firefox 4 much more usable (i.e., more like Firefox 3.6).
1. One of the first things you'll probably notice after installing Firefox 4 is that the fonts look... wrong. There's a weird twinge of color like they've been slightly resized or rendered incorrectly. This is due to hardware acceleration, and to fix this, just type about:config in the address bar, search for "gfx.direct2d.disabled" (without the quotes) and toggle it to true.
2. Next, you'll notice that there's barely any of the useful tools at the top that we've all come to love and cherish. This is because, as Chrome has taught us, most people like spending a lot of their time digging around deep in menus for basic things that they use all the time. But luckily if you're not one those people, you can change everything back to 3.6-level usability. First, to get rid of the ugly orange button and get the menu bar back, right click on the tab bar and check Menu Bar. Repeat, checking the Bookmarks Toolbar, and unchecking Tabs on Top (yet another ill-advised change inspired by Chrome), and finally checking the Add-on Bar (more on this in a bit). You can then use Customize to change the toolbars however you like. Here is how I have mine set up:
3. If you're using Windows 7, you'll notice that the background of everything at the top is now transparent using Aero. If you don't like this, and would like only the title bar to use Aero as it was previous versions of Firefox, there are several easy ways to change this back. This is discussed at length on this thread:
forums.mozillazine.org: Disable Firefox 4 transparency?(Win Vista/7)
In particular, check out the 2nd post by patrickjdempsey and the 3rd post by Nightwish. To use the code in either post, navigate to this folder:
C:\Users\[YOUR USER NAME]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[UNIQUE].default\chrome
There, create a file called: userChrome.css
Open that file (with a text editor if that's not the default), copy patrick's or Nightwish's code, close Firefox, paste the code, save, and open Firefox again. Aero should now be restricted to the title bar only. In my userChrome.css file I am using the following combination of patrick's and nightwish's code:
window, dialog, wizard, prefwindow {
-moz-appearance: -moz-win-browsertabbar-toolbox !important;
}
4. If you haven't already, you'll notice that the Status Bar is gone, and when you hover over links the URL briefly appears in a little pop-up up box in the bottom-left corner of the window. In step 2 I suggested checking the Add-On Bar, which is the Status Bar's replacement. But even with the Add-on Bar enabled, URLs still don't appear in the bar for some reason, but rather above it. To get much of the old Status Bar functionality back, you can install the Status-4-Evar extension, which you can get here:
Status-4-Evar :: Add-ons for Firefox
Using Customize, you can choose what appears and where in the newly modified Add-on Bar.
5. This last suggestion isn't limited to Firefox 4, but Firefox in general. One of the best features of Firefox is its extensive extension library with which you can modify Firefox in pretty much any way imaginable. Here are the Firefox extensions I currently use:
1-Click Weather - Accurate and customizable weather data from The Weather Channel. Hasn't been updated in over a year and needs some minor tweaking to work with Firefox 4, as explained here in this extremely helpful post by silverhawk: Review for 1-ClickWeather by silverhawk. I used to use Forecast Fox, but that uses data from AccuWeather, and I found that their temperature data is not as accurate as The Weather Channel's.
About This Site Bookmarks - An ooooooold extension from Lifehacker alum Gina Trapani that lets you right-click on any page for a bevy of useful links. Unfortunately, it hasn't been updated in forever. Fortunately, I found a modified version awhile back that works great.
AdBlock Plus (with EasyList subscription). Using the Internet is a completely different experience depending if you use ad blocking software or not, to the point where the Internet is pretty much unusable now without it.
AutoCopy - With this extension you can highlight text and it will automatically be copied without having to Ctrl+C or right click. You can then middle-click to paste instead of Ctrl+V or right clicking. Very convenient!
DictionarySearch - With this extension, if you come across a word you don't know, you can just highlight the word, right click and search the default dictionary (as well as many others if you so choose) for it.
DownloadHelper - Easily download most streaming video and audio.
NoScript - Stops javascript from automatically running on webpages unless added to your whitelist. This is a great security precaution for visiting websites you haven't been to before, since for many searches the results are filled with attack sites.
SearchPreview - In Google (and other) search results, inserts a small image preview to the left of the link and page description. So you can quickly identify the result from a certain site (e.g., Wikipedia, IMDB, etc.) if you know which one you want, as well as which to avoid (e.g., blank parked domain pages, known attack sites, etc.).
Status-4-Evar - Mentioned above, returns much of the functionality of the old Firefox 3.x status bar to the dumbed down Firefox 4 Add-on Bar.
Tab Mix Plus - With this extension you get complete customizability of how Tabs look and function.
Vaccum Places Improved - With Firefox 3.x, this extension was very useful in shrinking down places.sqlite (the file where your bookmarks are stored), but with Firefox 4 it seems like places.sqlite has a set size of 10 MB, and automatically cleaning it up with this extension doesn't decrease it. (With Firefox 3.6 my places file is around 2 MB currently.)
Ok, for now those are all of my suggestions for an improved experience with Firefox 4.
