Jimmays.com

So, with that out of the way,

Anyway, what am I geeking out about, you might ask? Well it’s simple really. I love Firefox.

Ok that isn’t the most relevant thing to say, but let me explain. Firefox is at his point the 2nd most popular web browser available. It has slightly over 20% market share. That being said, it’s not 100%, and it’s not #1.

Internet Explorer is number one, simply because it comes installed on every Windows computer. It does a good enough job to get things done, so the people that don’t care about having as close to a perfect web experience as possible just don’t have much incentive to go find out there are different ways to view a web page.

Granted, there are some Internet Explorer-only perks that are sprinkled in here and there, but overwhelmingly it is agreed upon that Internet Explorer is NOT a good enough browser.

If it EVER gets CSS selectors right, or gets on the same page with web formats correctly (SVG for instance), then IE will have earned its #1 market share.

Firefox is cutting into it, though. My dad even has it installed on his Macintosh computer AND PC, even though Mac has its own superb browser (Safari).

The biggest thing Firefox has going for it (in my opinion)? The extensions. What are extensions? They are little nuggets that alter the default way the browser behaves in some way. Ultimately HOW they do this depends on the developer, but the simple fact that you can customize the browser is a very big deal.

To me, this wasn’t a huge thing. The fact that Firefox rendered web pages the way they were supposed to was the biggest draw (and the fact it wasn’t cluttered by menus and functions and junk I didn’t use for drivers I didn’t want).

Anyway, lately I have been trying to catch up on some reading. This is something that my own personal philosophy has dictated. I don’t feel like I can know too much. But I don’t enjoy buying books that I intend to read once, and to have all that expense and all that ‘bulk.’ Whenever I move, schlepping books is NOT one of my favorite things to do.

So what do I do? Go to the Library! This allows me to check out books for up to a month at a time, for free! Yeah I know, strange concept, going to the library. But how does this relate to Firefox, and about why I am geeking out?

Well, my library out here in the Bay Area is signed up with the website Safari Books Online. This allows me to read books on almost every topic known to man, in my own home, on my own time, on my computer screen! No late fees involved, no driving, no walking, no nothing!

Not every book that is available in the library is available to read online, but for the most part I have noticed once you get ‘in’ to the online portion of the library, you can read just about every book listed in their database.

But once again, how does this relate to me geeking out? Well I have a widescreen monitor. This means my screen is MUCH wider than it is tall. This is great for things like games, and just entertainment in general like TV and movies (yes I watch TV on my computer). But for all of documented time we have been writing words down on documents that are taller than they are high. This certainly has not changed recently.

This creates a little bit of a problem. Web browsers tend to follow the convention of my monitor: they have a very WIDE viewing pane. All the functions are at the top and bottom, and the only functions at the sides are the scroll bars. This is fine for CRT monitors, as they are relatively square, so SOMEWHERE it has to go, and the top seems like as good a place as any.

The issue for me is that if I want to view a pdf, or go to this website to read books that allow me to read online, all that stuff prevents me from clearly reading an entire ‘page.’ I can have it one of two ways: I can maximize the page within the window as best as it can fit, and then the text will be proportionally small, or I can zoom in and then I need to scroll to read the bottom of any given page.

I don’t want to have to deal with either. I want it all!

So the only way to do this is to figure out how to manipulate pdf documents to fill in a larger portion of the screen. Usually the height of the viewing area is the only thing dictating the overall size of the document. If my vertical viewing area increases, so too does the size of the entire page!

So with my resolution maxed out, where do I get additional vertical pixels? The first area I found extra room was with Windows. I use a dock similar to the one found in Mac OS X, from Stardock, and it has an option to disable the Windows Task Bar, which takes up about 30 pixels or so. Not a lot, but every little bit helps. My dock can then simply slide up on top of everything when I pull my mouse to the bottom of the screen.

Now, with that accomplished, I need to find more vertical pixels. The only thing that is ‘stealing’ pixels at this point is Firefox itself. I like the way Firefox is designed. It looks good. All the text is about the perfect size. Not too big, not too small. Buttons are the same way. Not too big, not too small (at least with the default theme. Yeah Firefox can be skinned too. The options are yours!)

Now where is Firefox using pixels and what can I do about it? Let’s approach this from the top-down:

- The title bar stays. I use it to move my windows around and don’t think I could ever get used to it being removed. Plus using it to view page titles just makes sense to me.

- The menu bar stays too. I tried moving all my navigation elements up there and merging them, but the bar was too thin and it made my icons too small for my liking. I would have lost a lot of functionality if I did that, and my goal is to lose ZERO functionality (if not gain functionality). So it and the navigation bar stay.

- Bookmarks bar: They go. Just right clicked on the main chrome, and unchecked ‘bookmarks’ toolbar.

- Status bar and tabs: these are where the fun starts! For now they go.

Ok so with the tabs bar dedicated to be left out, and the bookmarks bar gone, and the status bar decided to get left out, how do I do it, and how do I replace their functions?

For the tab bar I installed this nifty extension, called Tab Kit. This cool buddy is great. It allows me to display all my tabs in a vertical bar off to the side, so I can save my vertical space. It also has a lot of cool features that allow me to interact with the tabs a lot more intuitively (like it adds newly created tabs in the ‘queue’ next in line after the current tab, instead of at the end of the queue). This is a HUGE plus, and not only that it allows a lot more tabs to be displayed with out losing practical information. This comes at a BIG expense to horizontal width, but that’s fine by me. I still have LOTS left over for the web page.

For the bookmarks, I simply used the sidebar. This is something that takes up a LOT of space too, and I am deciding whether I want to use an auto-hide extension to save space when I am not interacting with it. I think I may end up doing just that.

For the final touches, I installed autoHideStatusBar (yeah it is all one jumble of letters). This allows my status bar to remain off-screen when it doesn’t need to be used (which is about 99% of the time). The only problem I have with this is that when it ‘pops’ back in it can be quite disruptive. I wish it had better ‘floating’ properties, but at this point it is a big in.

So, with all these changes, I have gained a LOT of vertical space and can read all of my documents with ease. With the removal of the Windows task bar, I even get extra room for everything else, whether it be Word Documents, or Spreadsheets, I mean, you get the idea.

Anyway, I think I have gone on long enough about this. You now know my path to conquer document space in Firefox. If you are using Internet Explorer, oh well