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How do I move the menu bar?

  • 9 replies
  • 7 have this problem
  • 251 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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I want to put my menu bar next to the address bar. The address bar does not need 80% of the space on that line. PLENTY of room for the menu bar. I hate looking at that big piece of wasted space at the top of my screen where the menu bar and the bar above the menu bar sit. removing the menu bar does have the appearance im looking for except it doesn't allow me to use the menu bar with out going through multiple clicks. Not convenient.

Just to be clear. I don't like seeing my desktop at the top of the screen. It is just wasted space.

I want to put my menu bar next to the address bar. The address bar does not need 80% of the space on that line. PLENTY of room for the menu bar. I hate looking at that big piece of wasted space at the top of my screen where the menu bar and the bar above the menu bar sit. removing the menu bar does have the appearance im looking for except it doesn't allow me to use the menu bar with out going through multiple clicks. Not convenient. Just to be clear. I don't like seeing my desktop at the top of the screen. It is just wasted space.

Chosen solution

See this support article.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-controls-buttons-and-toolbars

IMO, the best thing to do might be to move all the elements of the Navigation Toolbar (where the Location Bar / URL Bar is located), one at a time, and then hide the Nav Bar.

Another thing to consider is to use the Compact Menu extension, so that you can hide the Menu Bar and have access to all those menus via a Toolbar button. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/compact-menu-2/

And if you hide that Toolbar button in the Palette, you can use the Alt key to open the "menu" bar in a vertical drop-down in the upper-left corner of the browser window. No need for the Menu Bar or even a Toolbar button for taking up UI space.

I have been doing my own one toolbar UI setup since the days of Firefox 1.0, I even have some of my bookmarks in a folder sitting to the right of the Location bar.The bookmarks drop-down fro that folder like the "Links" over flow in IE. Firefox is so configurable and extensible, the only limit is the user's imagination!

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All Replies (9)

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Chosen Solution

See this support article.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-controls-buttons-and-toolbars

IMO, the best thing to do might be to move all the elements of the Navigation Toolbar (where the Location Bar / URL Bar is located), one at a time, and then hide the Nav Bar.

Another thing to consider is to use the Compact Menu extension, so that you can hide the Menu Bar and have access to all those menus via a Toolbar button. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/compact-menu-2/

And if you hide that Toolbar button in the Palette, you can use the Alt key to open the "menu" bar in a vertical drop-down in the upper-left corner of the browser window. No need for the Menu Bar or even a Toolbar button for taking up UI space.

I have been doing my own one toolbar UI setup since the days of Firefox 1.0, I even have some of my bookmarks in a folder sitting to the right of the Location bar.The bookmarks drop-down fro that folder like the "Links" over flow in IE. Firefox is so configurable and extensible, the only limit is the user's imagination!

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When the Menu Bar is off (Firefox button on), tapping the ALT key or the F10 key will temporarily show the Menu Bar so that you can make selections from the old-style Menu Bar. Turning the Menu Bar off and the Firefox button on uses one less vertical line on the display. See:

As for the Windows title bar, that is a windows function and Firefox uses it to display the Firefox button and other items at various times. I do not know of an option to turn it off.

The horizontal space used by the URL/Location bar can be changed:

Modified by TheOldFox

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When I use customize, I can grab the menu bar but it wont hook to the url bar even though it shows the spacer like it wants to hook on. Is this what you meant? Otherwise I will just use the suggestion to hide it and use alt. Still not as good as the old firefox worked. But I am sure somebody thought it was a good idea.

Am I wrong in my thinking that the url area is a little excessive? Wasted space? does somebody really need to read that big of a line? If I "needed" to read it, I could just cut and paste...

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You need to drag items from the Navigation Toolbar to a position next to the menus on the menu bar. You can't move the menu items, so you need to do the opposite.

Another possibility is to customize the Firefox menu button.

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As I mentioned, I haven't used the Menu Bar since 2004, because I have always thought it was a waste of space. I use the keyboard primarily for accessing the individual menu items, and the Alt key works fine to reveal the Menu Bar. Compact Menu has been able to do that since it was developed way back in 2003; whereas Firefox has had that feature for barely 2 1/2 years now.

As far as the Location Bar / Address Bar, I happen to like it being long to show the entire URL, or as close to the entire URL (they been getting progressively longer over the years).

Yes, customizing the toolbars has changed a bit in recent years, but it is still possible to "compact" the various elements that are sitting on the toolbar section of Firefox. Users need to be flexible, if one method doesn't work, try achieving the desired results in a different manner.

Did you try moving all the elements of the Navigation Bar to the Menu Bar, as I recommended? That does work!

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Thanks. All the answers were helpful.

I must have miss read the original response. I thought you wanted me to drag the menu to the nav bar. The opposite way did work dragging all items one at a time. Tedious.

I cant exactly remember how it looked before the update. But allowing me to move all of the menu bar would have made it much easier. Still it didnt look or feel right. Maybe the tabs have moved too. Also the fact that it let me drag it but not place it any where is very misleading.

Anyway I did the minimize method. firefox tab on. I will just have to get used to the new and "improved" version.

Thanks again.

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You're welcome!

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I am not sure if this is exactly what i am looking for from the posts i see but it is on the same type of issue

On my computer the menu bar where you see the firefox, skype HP quick connect are showing up on the left side of the screen and they used to be on the bottom.

How do I move it back to the bottom of the page? Any help will be greatly appreciated

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Hi wrightway

Can you attach a screenshot?

Use a compressed image type like PNG or JPG to save the screenshot.


Do you mean that you want to move the Tab bar from the position at the top to just above the browsing area?

Current Firefox versions only show the "Tabs on Top" menu entry in the "View > Toolbars" and "Firefox > Options" menu and in toolbar context menus if the tabs aren't in the default position on top.

If the tabs are on top and the menu entry isn't available and you want to move the tabs below the navigation toolbar then you can toggle the browser.tabs.onTop pref to false on the about:config page. A Firefox restart is necessary to update the menu entry to either show or remove it.

Note that this feature will be removed entirely in future Firefox versions, so you won't be able to move the Tab bar by toggling this pref.