Chrome-like Floating Statusbar for Firefox

Yeah, I’m a little crazy about screen space. I don’t like the statusbar on the bottom of my firefox window. The only thing that I really use it for is to check the address of links that I’m hovering over.

I like the way Chrome and other browsers do this – a little box appears with the link address. So I decided to do this to Firefox. This isn’t an extension, just a little userContent.css hack and some icons. The screenshot above shows what it looks like for me in Firefox when I hover over a link.

Download Zip File – August 19, 2010

• August 19, 2010 – fixed variable margin/padding bug
• August 9, 2010 – initial upload

To summarize, the zip file above contains a few icons and a userContent.css file. If you’ve modified userContent.css before, you know how this works. Basically, it applies some styles to certain elements on ALL websites that you browse.

Instructions:

Download and extract the zip file. You’ll find a “README” file that contains these instructions, a “userContent.css” file, and a folder labeled “floating-statusbar-icons”.

Find your Firefox profile directory. In Linux, this is at ~/.mozilla/firefox/<YOUR PROFILE DIRECTORY>. Inside your profile directory is a folder called “chrome”.

The “userContent.css” file and the “floating-statusbar-icons” folder need to be moved into the “chrome” folder in your profile directory. (Note, if you’ve customized your userContent.css before, you need to just copy-paste the code from my provided css file into yours).

Restart Firefox. Go to “View” -> uncheck “Status Bar”. This isn’t necessary, but isn’t the whole point to get rid of your statusbar?

Oh, a cool bonus:

Hover over an image link and you get:

Little icons will indicate the type of file that’s being linked to. There’s also a lock for https links, a “new tab” icon for links that will open in a new tab/window, and an envelope icon for mailto: links. There are several filetypes that will show icons, so have fun experimenting.

Note that this isn’t perfect due to some limitations to CSS and some laziness on my part. This won’t completely replace your statusbar if you use it for MORE than what’s described above (showing a link address when you hover over the link). It won’t show your weather and it won’t show icons for your Firefox addons.

Credit:

I’m using icons from the Silk Icon set (1.3) by Mark James: http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/

Want more?

Got something to add? Let me know and I’ll update the zip file. Thanks!