Optimize Firefox for your Netbook

I‘m on my second netbook. In May 2008, when they first came out, I acquired an ASUS eee 900. I ordered it from Amazon.com and had to drive to the U.S. to pick it up (Amazon.com doesn’t deliver to Canada, and Amazon.ca was not offering it). It was a sweet little machine, running an odd variation of Linux called Xandros, which I hacked to enable “full desktop” mode instead of the “simplified” mode that the system came with. I toted that little sweetie around for several months, even taking it with me for our week in Paris. It only had one serious flaw (plus a few minor ones) — the keyboard was too small for my hands. This was compounded by the half-size Shift key on the right side. I’m a right-side-shifter, and I’d miss the Shift key and hit Enter at least four out of five times. It drove me crazy.

When HP came out with the HP Mini 2133, I knew that was the netbook for me. The keyboard, while only slightly larger than the one on the ASUS, felt much bigger, and it had a nice large — and well positioned — Shift key on the right. However, I couldn’t justify abandoning the ASUS just yet, so I hung on for a while. Soon enough, HP came out with the HP Mini 1000, a variation on the 2133. Most importantly, it used the same keyboard. Fine. The minute it was available in Canada I got one, and I absolute love it (although, like any machine, it is not without its problems).

I love small laptops, and I have a long history of experimenting with them, going all the way back to the Compaq Aero I bought in 1995. It had a small 600×480 greyscale screen and a paltry 25 MHz processor running Windows 3.1. Oh, those were the days.

For the current crop of netbooks — which pretty much all have the same specs — the main problem is the small screen. This is particularly so with regard to the height. Most 10-inch netbooks have 1024 pixels of horizontal resolution, but — because they have “widescreen” aspect ratios — only about 600 vertical pixels. In other words, they’re long enough but not tall enough. If the application you’re using has a lot of horizotal toolbars, you’re left with very little actual working space. For example, I can’t even imagine using Word 2007, with its ghastly “ribbon,” on a 600 pixel tall netbook screen. You’d have barely a paragraph’s worth of writing space!

In my case, I use my netbook almost exclusively for Web browsing. Fortunately, I’ve found a few tricks that let me optimize Firefox for use on a short screen. If you’re using Firefox on a netbook — or any machine that has a small screen — you too might find these tricks useful.

Tip 1: Use the Tiny Menu add-on to reclaim a toolbar’s worth of screen space.

The TinyMenu add-on puts all of the Firefox menus under one “MENU” button. You can then move your navigation items up into the freed space on the Menu toolbar, and then get rid of the navigation toolbar.

Here’s how to move the navigation items up to the Menu toolbar:

1. Right-click on any toolbar and choose “Customize…” from the context menu.
2. On the “Customize Toolbar” dialog, check the “Use Small Icons” box.
3. Now, behind the dialog, drag and drop items from the navigation toolbar onto the menu toolbar, one by one – your back, forward, stop and home buttons, the address bar, and the search bar.
4. When there’s nothing left, click the “Done” button. Now you’ll have an empty navigation toolbar. Right-click on the empty toolbar and uncheck “Navigation toolbar.” It will disappear, pulling everything up a row.

Below is a screenshot from my HP Mini, showing the result. Notice how there are only two toolbars, yet the menu is there (way over on the left). The navigation buttons and the address field are on the same toolbar as the menu. Under that is the bookmarks toolbar (which you can easily remove, but I find it very handy).

Tip 2: Use F11 to get more real estate on a temporary basis,

When you need more space in your browser, (such as when you’re looking at a Google map or a photo), hit F11. Firefox will go into an “extended maximize” mode, in which all the toolbars and the status bar disappear. Even the Windows task bar is hidden. You can still access your tabs by putting your cursor at the top of the screen (the tabs will appear as long as the cursor is there). When you want to go back to the regular mode, hit F11 again.

Below is a screenshot from my HP Mini showing what it looks like after you click F11. Full screen mode!

I hope these tips help you enjoy your netbook!