Advanced: Firefox Search Bar resizing
Ok, this is an advanced one...beware... Anyway, I like Mozilla Firefox 0.90 and I like the fact that it contains a Search toolbar that has Google built-in. However, I [b]hate[/b] the size and location (i.e. the Navigation Toolbar) of that search bar. I hate the fact that it eats into my screen real estate for the URL bar (i.e. where you type http://...) and I hate the fact that the Google edit box is so tiny. Ok, well luckily Firefox has a way you can customize your toolbars. Fine, go to View > Toolbars > Customize. Click "Add New Toolbar", name it Search. This will create a blank toolbar underneath your Navigation toolbar. Now, drag the actual Google search bar (the thing with the "G" in it) sitting next to your URL text box to your newly created toolbar. While you're at it, you can add other things to this new toolbar if you want like "Open a new tab" buttons, etc. They're all sitting in the "Customize Toolbar" window and it's all fairly intuitive. Great, now we have the Navigation toolbar which has the URL field stretched all the way to the edge of the screen and we have a new Search toolbar that allows us to search the web. We can disable/enable that toolbar if we want. Nice. But wait, the Google box on our new Search toolbar is still stuck at that horrid width. Here's what you have to do to change it...it ain't pretty folks, but the powers-that-be at Mozilla have currently rejected any proposal to make this control resizable (see [url=http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=205011]this bug report[/url]). Ok, get ready for some fun: - go to your Mozilla install directory (typically C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox) - go into the chrome subdirectory - make a copy of the file browser.jar (right-click the file, click Copy, then click Paste) - now open browser.jar with Winzip and extract its contents to a local directory. Here's how you do that in detail: --- create c:\fftemp --- open browser.jar in Winzip (right-click classic.jar, choose Open With > Choose Program, then find Winzip and click it) --- select all files (ctrl+a) in the Winzip window --- extract all files into your temp directory c:\fftemp (Actions > Extract) --- close Winzip for now - now go to your temp directory (c:\fftemp) in Windows Explorer and navigate to the content\browser - open the file browser.xul in a text editor - search for the text "search-container", you should see an entry like: [code:1] [/code:1] Change it to the following: [code:1] [/code:1] Save the browser.xul file and now we have to recreate the jar file: - browse back up to the top of the temp directory (c:\fftemp) - select all files in the explorer window (ctrl+a) - right-click and choose Winzip > Add to Zip file - name the zip file browser.jar (no .zip extension) Now copy the new browser.jar file to c:\program files\mozilla firefox\chrome. Close all Firefox windows and reopen the browser. If you did everything right, the Google search bar should size itself to the extent of your window. If you did something wrong, I'm not sure what will happen but if it results in disaster you can always remove the browser.jar you made and rename the copy back to browser.jar and everything should be restored. Regards, Jeff
[quote="Rob"]It's funny, but I go to google (type in google, ctrl-enter) instead of using that search box most of the time.[/quote] To paraphrase you: "Loser" [quote="Rob"]I forget it's there. It's an awkward spot and it's too small to be useful but big enough to take away from the address bar.[/quote] Zactly. This is why this tip will be useful for you. FYI, I much prefer IE for its Google toolbar (which also has popup blocking etc), but if I'm going to jump on the Firefox bandwagon... this tip will get me closer to the Ultimate Browing Experience (UBE). Disclaimer: I actually do think Firefox is getting there, but the only tangible benefit over IE that I get out of it at the moment is tabbed browsing, though this is a big benefit actually. [quote="Rob"] One other thing that can go wrong when you make the new .jar. I think that if you don't have file extenstions shown in Explorer, you could have trouble saving with the .jar extension from Winzip. You might have to save as a zip then rename it. I could be wrong, though.[/quote] I'm not sure about this, because the extension aspect is part of Winzip's saving mechanism, not part of the browser. Anyway, if you don't have "view file extensions" enabled in Windows explorer, you are probably not an Advanced user and this tip is not for you. :P Anyway, good catch... Interestingly, when I performed this, my jar files actually shrank in size (I must have compression turned up in Winzip) so you could say that by doing this tip you also marginally improve the invocation time (or not, maybe the extra decompression required offsets this?). Regards, Jeff
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