Wednesday, January 19, 2011

How to add or remove toolbar from Firefox


Firefox lets us control the appearance of the browser. In default setup it shows Menu bar( the one where all File, Edit, View etc. are placed),  Address bar(Where we type the URL of a website) and the Bookmarks Toolbar. We can customize firefox settings and change the look of the firefox window. If we want we can make it look like Google Chrome which does not show Menu bar. We can also add new toolbars to firefox window.


How to add a new toolbar to firefox?

We can have new toolbars in addition to the default Menu bar, Address bar and Bookmarks bar. We can also add buttons like Print , Bookmarks, Downloads, New window, New tab, History, Cut, Copy, Full screen etc. to the new toolbar.

This can be done through following steps:

  • Right click on the Menu Bar (or) Click on View in Menu bar and select Toolbars.
  • Click on customize

  • Now click on the button Add New Toolbar





  • It opens another window New Toolbar





  • Now give a new name for the new toolbar(for example, MyToolbar) and click OK to close the window.





  • Now you can see the new toolbar in the firefox window. The new toolbar looks empty as we have not added any buttons to it yet.





  • We can add buttons to the new toolbar by dragging the items from Customize Toolbar window and dropping them on the new toolbar(Drag and drop method).  After adding the required icons click on Done to close the window.





  • If you do not add any items to the new tool bar, it will not be shown in the window and will be auto deleted.





  • Using Customize toolbar window, we can add items not only to the new toolbar but also to the existing toolbars(Menu bar, Navigation bar, Bookmarks toolbar)






  • Remove a Toolbar from Firefox window:

    •  Right click on the Menu bar(second from the top) or click on View in the Menu bar and select Toolbars.Now you can see all the toolbars(Menu Bar, Navigation Toolbar, Bookmarks Toolbar and any other ones you added). Deselect the one you want to remove from the window.
    • Above steps lets you just to hide the toolbar but not remove it completely. You can always restore it from View -> Toolbars
    • If you want to remove the toolbar permanently right click on the toolbar and select Customize. Now drag and drop the items from toolbar to the customize window. Once the toolbar is emptied it will be automatically deleted from the toolbar.
    Address bar / Menu bar / Bookmarks bar missing in Firefox window
    If any of the standard toolbars(Address bar or Menu bar or Bookmarks bar) is missing then you can add them back by clicking on View -> Toolbars and then selecting the toolbar that is missing. For example in the below snapshot you can see that Navigation bar is not selected and hence it's not shown in the firefox window. Now just clicking on the Navigation bar will enable the check button and will add the toolbar to the window.