Make Firefox Look Fancy in Vista (and a little in XP too!)

Anyhow, I was looking around this afternoon for some Firefox appearance tweaks for Vista, and I came across a number.  Now, if you know me, you know I really like Microsoft’s latest and greatest operating system.  Nothing out there beats it right now.  Possibly not even Ubuntu.  That goes a long way considering I’m a huge Ubuntu fan.  So, here’s what you can do to make Firefox in Vista look like this:

First of all, let’s get that nice glass look on the navigation toolbar.  Download the Glasser addon from Mozilla Addons.  It works perfectly in Firefox 3.  It is “experimental,” but go ahead and download it anyway (you might need to make a Mozilla account).  Just a tip: you need to have Firefox 3 (why don’t you already?!) to use most of these tweaks. (If you don’t have Vista, just find another Vista looking theme)

Next we’re going to hide that menu bar at the top.  You can download the Personal Menu addon for this.  Once you’ve downloaded (and restarted Firefox), you can just right-click on the menu bar and deselect “Menus Toolbar” to remove it.  If you ever need to bring it back up, just hit the Alt key, and it will appear temporarily.  Looking nicer already, eh?

Now we want the Vista Explorer-like bookmarks toolbar.  For this we’ll need the Stylish addon.  Now hit the Alt key to bring up the menu bar, and click Tools–Add-ons.  Open up the Stylish options dialogue.  Click on Write to create a new CSS style.  Copy the following code, and click Save.

@namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul);

#main-window #navigator-toolbox #PersonalToolbar
{
border-top: 0 none !important;
-moz-appearance: none !important;
background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAAfCAYAAAAmyadiAAAAAXNSR0IArs4c6QAAAARnQU1BAACxjwv8YQUAAAAgY0hSTQAAeiYAAICEAAD6AAAAgOgAAHUwAADqYAAAOpgAABdwnLpRPAAAAAlwSFlzAAALEgAACxIB0t1+/AAAAAd0SU1FB9cCEwYDIgFDQ7MAAAAYdEVYdFNvZnR3YXJlAFBhaW50Lk5FVCB2My4wOGVynOEAAACjSURBVBhXY9hw4sZ/hvpl+/8zVC/e+5+hbMHu/wyFc3b8Z8iesfU/Q9rUzf8ZEiZs+M8Q1bP2P0NIx6r/DL7Ny/4zeNQv+c/gVL3wP4Ntxbz/DJalc/4zsHiUgoiS/wysIILdE8jl8C77z8DtU/6fgd+/6j+DSHDtfwapiMb/DAqxrf8ZNNN6/jOYFE39z2DfOP8/g9cEoPGTD5z7z8Ck4fgfAAdOR5a0f2FqAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC) !important;
padding: 2px 3px 3px 3px !important;
color: white !important;
}

#main-window #navigator-toolbox #PersonalToolbar toolbarbutton
{
padding: 0 5px !important;
}

#main-window #navigator-toolbox #PersonalToolbar toolbarbutton > label
{
color: white !important;
}

#main-window #navigator-toolbox #PersonalToolbar .toolbarbutton-menu-dropmarker
{
list-style-image: url(arrow-dn.gif) !important;
}

Now your bookmarks toolbar should look like that clean, Vista Explorer bar you’re (hopefully) used to.

And now finally, we want to make the progress bar appear in the location bar, as in Explorer.  For this download the Fission addon.  Then open up the Stylish options again and create another new CSS style.  Copy the following code in:

#urlbar[fission="fusion"] > #statusbar-icon .progress-bar{
-moz-appearance: progresschunk !important;
background-color: transparent !important;
opacity: .5 !important;
}

.autocomplete-textbox-container-fission{
opacity: .999 !important;
}

Windows XP Support

The unprecedented step by the corporation Microsoft – providing technical support to users operating system, which was published in 2001, and at the time of termination by the corporation technical support it will be full 13 years! Senior Vice President of Microsoft Corporation Bill Veghte, in his letter to customers said that software developers will continue to provide security updates and other critical updates for Windows XP until April 2014.

“Our continued support Windows XP operating system is the result of our recognition that people use their Windows-PCs for many years” – writes Bill Veghte. Typically, Microsoft OS support ceases for a period of ten years since its release. For example, it plans to discontinue support for Windows 2000 in 2010.

Microsoft may not have choice but to implement technical support Windows XP for a long period, given that most of its major business customers have not upgraded their personal computers and laptops with the new operating system Windows Vista.