Linux Mint Forums

Mint is one of the few distributions that has desktop environments (Cinnamon,MATE,xfce) with one taskbar at the bottom side of the screen (it is at the same place as it is on windows). Firefox for linux does not have the ability to put the tabs on the title bar as firefox does on windows. How about developing and providing a default enabled addon for firefox at mint (like mint-search-enhancer is a default enabled add-on and provided by mint) that puts tabs on title bar ? i.e. Ubuntu with unity has a specific addon to integrate firefox's menu bar and the title bar at the top bar of unity. Mint could have an addon to put firefox tabs on title bar. In order to be clear, I've made what I mean with tabs on title bar, with a screenshot and the help of Gimp:



link for large picture:
http://i47.tinypic.com/2a8ri1w.jpg

An existing add-on for firefox that does this job, but you have to adjust it's options to have a similar result as it is on the picture is that:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... -plus-sma/

It is for Mozilla to change the default look or for you to install one the addons available to do this if this is what you want, it is not for the mint team to dictate the look of applications for all users imo. Whereas ubuntu chose to make the globalmenu the default to fit in with unity, mint has always allowed to the user to choose how they want their desktop to look.

That's why I've suggested an add-on If someone doesn't want to have it, has the option to disable it or uninstall it.

But firefox is an application that we all use and it has that difference between linux and windows version. Mozilla did not implement tabs on title bar feature yet on linux version, and I think there is no plan to do that. The existing add-on that does this, is not very lightweight. That's why I'm talking about an add-on for mint's firefox.

That feature (tabs on title bar) suits perfectly on Cinnamon and MATE desktops, as it does with every desktop that has only one taskbar at the bottom of the screen. Chrome/Chromium has this feature at both windows and linux versions available and it is the best choise for netbooks and small monitors because it provides more space than firefox (firefox with this add-on can be better for netbooks).

If the problem is the freedom of user's choise, I think that the solution is to have an add-on like this but disabled by default or available for installation for everyone who wants to have that feature at mint's firefox.

I agree this would be awesome and certainly would make me consider returning to firefox from chromium (i find the lack of screenspace on netbooks terrible) but its not the mint devs responsibilities, perhaps you could gather some followers who are into coding on the irc channels and get the code sorted, i know mint certainly did have an integration extension which if they still maintain im sure they would be happy to consider code, I am unfortunately not familiar with this sort of coding so cant help you do this,

takis123 wrote:That's why I've suggested an add-on If someone doesn't want to have it, has the option to disable it or uninstall it.
But firefox is an application that we all use and it has that difference between linux and windows version

..But firefox is an application that we all use..
I don't.

And it is for Mozilla to fix that as indicated to match versions between each OS they can install to; perhaps Mozilla thinks there is some distinction that can be maintained without making it windows and then cloning that interface style to any other OS (Linux or Apple)

Second reason, making it a default with an option to disable is no better than making it not there with an option to install it, but that is not Mint's job, since they like all Linux's use upstream developer solutions and don't try to funnel them through a styling exercise for their particular brand of Linux distribution, except for the usual minor changes to match their desktop themes and so on..
--the fact that they provide a mint themed search bar install, which is removable (if you want), and is there to help Mint defray costs (remember their OS and the oss applications are free to users), does not mean they should be looking everywhere to decide how to accommodate every user idea.

Whenever I have used Firefox i have removed those menu buttons, I don't need 'em, that is what I use a search for, or the book pages

I also don't get the statement about the taskbar (for the OS) being on the bottom, like windows or Apple (OSX - centered panel), is that a failure ??..
--I actually like the taskbar being on the bottom, maybe I have gotten used to it from long windows OS use, and therefor don't need other locations such as the top (aka Ubuntu) or the sides (user options), it can even be automatically hidden, although I just leave it siting there as I don 't need to see the extra 1/4" of screen space
--I do not use status bars for browsers for instance, but that has nothing to do with screen space, only I don't like seeing it on the screen.

Mozilla has not implemented this feature yet on linux. I don't know the reasons. Maybe the differences between the desktop enviroments are the reason (i.e. at unity that feature is not necessary but at MATE is absolutely necessary for many users because it fits with that envoronment and increases productivity when using firefox). An add-on that can achieve that exists but is heavyweight. I started that topic because I saw Ubuntu with Unity having an add-on that integrates perfectly firefox menu to Unity

The closest I've gotten is by using Maximus and making the bottom panel as small as possible.

Mozenrath wrote:by using Maximus

If you want the unity menu integration you should just use unity. If you just want to maximise FF screen space or emulate tabs on the titlebar you can install the Hide Caption Titlebar Plus addon, and run maximised with a hidden panel.

I use an extension for firefox : "toolbar autohide" to fade in and out the tabbar and the addon bar in firefox. It works greate and its lightweight. however the title bar is useless so far. for efficiency it is indeed the responsibility of the mate developers to make this better.

I read about gnome autohide title bar and in bohdi linux you can fade out the title bar.

I would love to invest time in developing an extension for this with features like:
adding more buttons (always on top) or
adding buttons for skripts related to a specific software or
displaying the "open since: time", but I dont know where to start :/

I'm just shilling for fluxbox here, but with FB it's trivially easy to omit the titlebar on any app, including FF.

[url=http://en.zimagez.com/zimage/ffnotitlebar.php][img]http://en.zimagez.com/avatar/ffnotitlebar.jpg[/img][/url]

You can remove the title bar in Enlightenment too but I prefer to have it and if other WMs offer it as as option it is not likely to be very popular. The extra real estate is easily had by pressing F11 to go full screen and then mouse up to the top to get the tb buttons to show, so that sounds close. Without the title bar you have to use extra keys and a contextual menu...awkward...


Pat

Edit: Forgot to mention there is an addon you can try. Xfce with the addon. I think you can adjust settings to make it more compact.

Played with that addon a little and squeezed the pus out of it.

Pat

Hi,

thank you so much for your ideas.

I am very happy with Hide Captionbar addon in combination with Toolbar Autohide addon. In this case you can just hide almost all of the bars, and they only appear if hovering with mouse over. its like fullscreen without fullscreen.

happy new year