One of the things that makes Firefox a great browser is its extensions. If you want an extra feature you can add it to Firefox without having to rewrite Firefox. However, all those great extensions keep cluttering up your toolbars with more and more little icons.

The answer? Um, more extensions! Here’s how I get the most bang for my buck on Firefox screen space:

1) Install the Tiny Menu extension. This will collapse your menu to a single item (“Menu”) that then pops out the actual system menu.

2) Install the Searchbar Autosizer extension. This lets you make a smaller search box and then when you type it pops it out. In the Preferences, click Keep the same width all the time and then press Advanced. Check “Shrink seachbar to button if empty” and then press Add Button to Toolbar. Size the search bar dn then set the minimum and suggestion widths to the same as the maximum. Also check “Empty searchbar when a query is submitted.” Now you’ll have a button on your toolbar that expands to the searchbar when you need it.

3) Customize the toolbars so you wind up with one or two tool bars that have everything you need on them. With the menu and the searchbar shrunk, you can get a lot on there. Particularly if you select icons only and check the small icon box.

4) (Optional) If you want to auto hide your bookmarks toolbar, read this Lifehacker article. Personally, I keep folders in my bookmark toolbar folder and then fill the folders with RSS feeds (live bookmarks). That way the feeds I follow are always a click away.

Here’s what my toolbar set up looks like:

Firefox toolbar - click to zoom

Note that I lied. My bookmark toolbar has a few non-folders on it (Hulu, for example). But most of them are folders containing live feeds.

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