How can I eliminate the pointless top bar, close up the spaces between bars that are wasting space and reduce the depth of the tabs so that I have the space I had before for the websites I am looking at?
I have updated to the latest form of Mozilla Firefox, and the top of the screen is altered so that it occupies far more space than it used to do, leaving far less space for what I want to look at. Why are there spaces between bars? Why are the tabs deeper than they used to be or need to be? How can I eliminate the pointless top bar which merely duplicates the information in the tab bar? Is there any way of simply restoring the previous arrangement?
All Replies (9)
Most people complain about there not being enough at the top of the browser window since Firefox 4 came out, please provide a screenshot of your problem with the duplication and the empty space.
I am not a computing expert, and the instructions which purport to explain how to provide a screenshot convey nothing to me. But the problems all show plainly in the illustrations to your help pages. The line at the very top duplicates the information in the open tab on the tab bar. There is a small gap between the file...edit...view bar and the address bar, and a much wider gap between the address bar and the bookmarks bar. (The one thing I have been able to do is put the tab bar back to its proper place directly above the main screen.)
Do you mean the title bar with the line at the very top?
Are there any toolbars enabled in View > Toolbars or Firefox > Options apart from the the default toolbars (Menu, Navigation, Bookmarks, Tab) that might be causing that extra space?
Start Firefox in Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode to check if one of the extensions is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox (Tools) > Add-ons > Appearance/Themes).
- Don't make any changes on the Safe mode start window.
- https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode
Yes, I mean the line at the very top, and no, there are no other toolbars enabled. Please look at the Help page 'Common questions after updating Firefox'. Scroll down to the heading 'Why are tabs on top of the location bar now?' Look at the illustration of the top of the computer screen under that heading. You can see the spaces above and below the address bar.
The orange Firefox button doesn't take the full height of the title bar and the buttons on the Navigation Toolbar do not take the full height. There is always some margin and with toolbar separators not showing you get the impression of extra space. You can select small icons for the toolbars to reduce the height.
Open the Customize window via "View > Toolbars > Customize" or via "Firefox > Options > Toolbar Layout" to select small icons.
The line at the very top is the title bar for the program and if you only have one tab open there is a lot of space which appears to be wasted.
Have you tried full screen mode? That removes the title bar altogether and auto-hides the tabs and toolbars so they only take up space when you move the cursor to the top of the screen.
Okay, I accept that this is just how it is, and there is nothing to be done about it, because no-one except me thinks that the icons and toolbars should be organised to take up minimum space in order to allocate maximum space to the page.
The crowning irony of all this is that, having updated to the latest Mozilla Firefox and consequently having this arrangement at the top of the page which I don't like, the middle of the page now comes up with its old message, 'You are not on the latest version of Firefox. Upgrade now.'
Computers are very odd. :(
You can use a compact style or use code in userChrome.css to make the toolbars smaller.
- https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/2108 - Stylish
- http://userstyles.org/stylish - userstyles.org - Restyle the web!