Tech Thoughts and Projects

A space to showcase my projects and thoughts on technology

Firefox Navigation Bar on a Web Page

Screenshot

Firefox is one of the few applications that is always running on my computer.  It is monumentally important for doing almost anything, yet its user experience is imperfect.  My complaints stem from Firefox's many superfluous tool bars that consume a large amount of screen space. Many of the tool bars are unnecessary and could be eliminated to reduce screen space consumption. Google Chrome has done this effectively. With Firefox, I wanted to enhance the interface by minimizing tool bars using some clever add-ons and lots of hot keys.

What I learned from adjusting my Firefox configuration was that the navigation bar is nearly unnecessary. I use the navigation bar for 3 reasons:

  1. Going to a particular website after opening a new tab.
  2. Adjusting the URL slightly. Ex: from twitter.com to twitter.com/tdedecko
  3. Wanting to know the URL of the web page I am currently browsing.
Reasons 2 and 3 are case situations. Needing to adjusting the URL occurs rarely and I generally know my location on the web (Gmail, Hacker News, Google Reader, etc). These situation arise infrequently and could be accomplished with a navigation bar that can be minimized.

Reason 1 is the important part. I use the navigation bar as if it were a shell for launching applications (which it is). This is a regular occurrence with the way I use Firefox. This implies that I need a navigation bar primarily when I open a new tab. The solution is to put the navigation bar on a web page that loads when I open a new tab.

I decided to accomplish this. First I needed to install a few Firefox add-ons. I installed:

These add-ons made it so opening a new tab launched my homepage and makes my navigation bar toggle-able by hitting F2.

Then, I spent an hour or so creating a navigation bar on a web page using jQuery and Blueprint CSS.

Try out my implementation: http://www.dedecko.com/navbar/

I set this as my homepage in Firefox. Now when I open a new tab a navigation bar on a web page appears. Very useful in my opinion.

This might be particularly useful for netbooks. Let me know if this is helpful.