Yes, you can have the Menu bar visible all the time (View > Toolbars) and drag button on the menu bar via View > Toolbars > Customize, just like in your Firefox 3.6 version.

Press F10 or tap the Alt key to bring up the "Menu Bar" temporarily if the Menu Bar is hidden in Firefox 4+ versions.

You can use an extension to set a default font size and page zoom on web pages.

• Default FullZoom Level: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/default-fullzoom-level/

Yes, Yes and Yes. You can totally make Firefox 11 look almost the same as 3.6 (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/common-questions-after-upgrading-firefox-36 and https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-customize-toolbars may help some). AdBlock does support Firefox 11, and you can zoom text only to whatever percentage you want.

Thanks...I'm going to try having both FF3.6 and FF11 by installing in different directories and tricking the profile system.

I'm guessing I'm SOL for keeping my CrystalFox Qute theme, which I love so dearly.

I just switched from 3.6 this week. Wish I could have it back! One add-on can make the address bar function the way it did in 3.6- Browse by name. This way, if you type in just "sourceforge," it will complete the address and take you to http://sourceforge.net/. The default now is to do a Google search on plain words typed in there. Some other features have disappeared, which I hope will come back. Address bar doesn't show the full URL. I used to copy a lot of articles by selecting the text, left mouse button, drag to end of page. Now it just drags to the end of the window, then stops. Honest, with all the add-ons I've had to add, 10.3 ESR and 11 seem slower than 3.6. New Adblock has changed a lot, including a "whitelist for unobtrusive ads." But, time marches on. I'm sure you've seen a lot of sites are already calling 3.6 an "Unsupported Browser." Wish I had a Linux machine, I'd keep 3.6 on there without much worry about the security updates.

Actually, I just had a thought. I'm going to install the Portable Apps version of 3.6, and load it up with the old extensions. I wonder if they'll keep the 3.6 extensions up there when it hits it's end of life, supposedly next month.

Try to make the Add-ons bar (Ctrl + /) or the Find bar (Ctrl + F) visible if you want to select text iwth the mouse beyond the current window.

I've spent the last 2 hours trying to whip FF11 into shape. I got the UI to be close.

The Google Toolbar can't be installed, and I can't find any extension that highlights page text based on what's in the search box. The default search box insults my intelligence; the magnifying glass is pointless and would be infinitely better if it were a highlight button (also, how about letting us hide the google logo?). The highlight function built into "Find" doesn't cut it, since it can't even support multiple non-consecutive words along with consecutive words in quotes. I'm sure the Mozilla team has worked hard to crank out 6 versions in a year, but the loss of flexible highlight ability is huge. I also use the Google Toolbar's "Find on page" buttons that appear when typing text.

http://i44.tinypic.com/10qwg1w.png
http://i40.tinypic.com/wix4km.jpg

Also with FF11, my whole system will just suddenly crash after ~30min. The screen gets purple noise all over, and only the mouse cursor is responsive. I have never seen this before. I otherwise have a perfectly stable system with XP SP3 and nothing running in the background.

From my point of view, FF11 gives me:
-spontaneous full system crashes
-no more good text highlighting
-no more CrystalFox Qute theme
-slightly faster performance
-better tab dragging

The top 3 outweigh the bottom 2.

Some more thoughts from somebody in the same state as you: First, why don't you install the Extended Release 10.0.3? This will put you on the "ESR" update channel. That'll avoid the every six week thing. (They're even talking about the "release" channel doing automatic silent updates for new versions.) I clicked the "check for updates" using portable v 10 and it automatically downloaded v 11, without asking. It does ask permission before you install it, but it automatically updates after a restart anyway. Long story short, I don't need fancy improvements every 6 weeks, so I suggest the ESR with just critical updates. This also avoids some of the problems of add-ons, including some major ones, not keeping pace with the six-week cycle.

I've found both 10,3 and 11 to be slow opening groups of tabs, say 6-10. I'm guessing it might be because of the new add-ons for security like Ghostery. I see FF now using about 60% of my CPU when opening multiple tabs. Multiple tabs open much faster with javascript off. The CPU might be the problem with the speed, hangs, and (rare) freezes for me. It doesn't hog my RAM.

I tried SeaMonkey for the first time in years, but it has most of the same quirks as FF. It's so frustrating, I'm actually using IE 9 pretty often, which I never did before. (Though there's really no user control there.) With FF10 some pages don't open properly for me, but I think that's because of the safety add-ons.

One thing I like is they added "Paste And Go" And "Paste And Search" which Opera's had for years. As for that Google search logo- why don't you try Startpage. They now use Google for their searches, just give you some privacy.

BTW, you can still get the latest 3.6 at Portable Apps, and it runs great off a USB stick. Some of the old versions of the add-ons are a pleasue compared to the new versions. But you can't use the Portable as default browser.

Good luck.

@cor-el- Thanks for your reply about the drag and select. I just discovered it's an "open" bug, so maybe it'll be fixed in the future. I turned on the add-ons bar, and that worked.

Now, for your Google Toolbar, unfortunately Google has dropped support for that, so there is no way to reinstall it. Read https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/google-toolbar-not-compatible-firefox.

As for your crashes, try updating your graphics driver. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-upgrade-my-graphics-drivers. Versions of Firefox from 4 and newer use Hardware acceleration to use your graphics chip for faster web browsing. Old versions of a graphics driver can cause that issue.

mrb2, Just so you know, all add-ons now default to compatible with the newest Firefox releases. The only exceptions are third-party addons that aren't from official Mozilla sources, add-ons with known isssues, and add-ons that were never updated to work with Firefox 4. http://blog.mozilla.com/futurereleases/2012/02/03/improving-the-firefox-update-experience/ has the details.

Tyler, you answered "yes" to "Can the latest version of Firefox provide just as functional of a topbar?", yet now you're saying I lose highlighting and automatic find-on-page buttons.

I already have the latest graphics driver: the nvidia March 13th release.

As I said, Google toolbar is no longer supported (that is the fault of Google, not Mozilla) but you can find add-ons that do the same thing (via the link I gave above).

Ah ha, I found Googlebar Lite at the bottom of that link. It's got the highlight feature. Although it works slightly differently, since it doesn't update as you type, and it highlights sections of words that have the same string as what you typed. It'll get the job done though.

I disabled hardware acceleration to try fixing the crashes.

FF11 doesn't collapse AdBlock-blocked banners as well as FF3.6. For example, tvguide.com and slashdot.com have empty gray areas on the top.

Googlebar Lite doesn't do unit conversions, or let you move the "Find" buttons to another spot on the toolbar.  :(

I got the FF11 topbar and status bar impressively close to FF3.6, but the Google Toolbar is too useful and I prefer my old theme. I'll be sticking with 3.6 even after its unsupported. I don't visit many questionable websites in the first place, and the user community might end up patching problems after April.

FF11 offers a practically negligible benefit from my point of view. So it's slightly faster.