Firefox 4 - Slim(mer) UI

UPDATE: Firefox 4 Beta 9 now has the "slim" title bar by default, making this post redundant. It also works seamlessly as well.

I liked Firefox 4 Beta 1... The simplified interface is kinda clean. But many noticed that there were just too many redundant pixels lying around, taking up your browser space. Thankfully, there was a hack that trims down all that unused space, thanks to the guys at DownloadSquad, who took the hack from another guy, who also took it from another guy. We'll go step by step, with my own modified code.

1. Locate your Profile directory -- click Help > Troubleshooting Information then Open Containing Folder
2. Now navigate to the Chrome directory
3. Copy userChrome-example.css into the same folder
4. Rename your copy to userChrome.css
5. Open userChrome.css with Notepad (or your text editor of choice) and dump the following code in it:

#appmenu-button-container {

position: fixed !important;

}

#appmenu-button {

padding: 3px 5px 3px 5px !important;

margin-left:5px !important;

}

#navigator-toolbox[tabsontop="true"] #TabsToolbar {

padding-left: 83px !important;

padding-right:112px !important;

}

#navigator-toolbox[tabsontop="true"] menubar{

padding-left: 85px !important;

}

#navigator-toolbox[tabsontop="false"] #TabsToolbar {

padding-left: 5px !important;

padding-right:5px !important;

}

#navigator-toolbox[tabsontop="false"] {

padding-top: 24px !important;

}

Save it and restart Firefox. It should look like the screenshot posted above. Note that the hack isn't complete; it might break under certain conditions, but for the most of it, I think there won't be many problems.

Should you want to revert back to the original interface, simply delete userChrome.css.

Free Games for Cheap Bastards

I know, a lot of you guys were waiting for newer games to be released, and might just end up buying pirated copies. But there are a few games which are totally free, and doesn't play too bad either. Either way, they can serve as time killers before you get the next game to play. So here goes the listing:

Alien Swarm

This is a new game developed by Valve using the Source engine. It features a top-down view to navigate around the levels, blasting away hostile aliens with 4 player co-op. Valve may haven't mentioned this but it might have something to do with Team 17's Alien Breed series, which is very, very similar.

Oh, being a Valve game, it requires Steam to be installed. And no, it has no relation to Ben 10.

Half Life 2: Deathmatch

This is the missing multiplayer component of Half Life 2. It plays almost exactly like the original Half Life multiplayer game, but with Half Life 2 weapons and maps. The game is multiplayer only, but you can install bots if you like. Oh, you can play as Combine as well.

This is a limited time offer, although I think I've seen this on since last year. ATI users click here and NVIDIA users click here to get it. Again, you'll need Steam to download it.

Frets on Fire X

Basically its an open source Guitar Hero/Rock Band clone, which is also a modification of the original Frets on Fire. Available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Don't be alarmed with the very bare theme when you start it up; the game is highly customizable with themes support, some mimicking Rock Band or Guitar Hero.

And the game doesn't actually come with songs. You will need to download the songs in order to play it. While it might sound like bummer, this way you don't actually have to download the songs that you don't want to play, saving bandwidth. A large collection can be found in the wiki for various songs and Geetar Freaks for songs from Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

The coolest part of this game is probably that it is played by holding the keyboard like a guitar, or maybe just the awesome Jurgen from the tutorial ;)

-------------------------------

So that caps off my post today, I might be posting more shortly. Stay tuned.

Firefox 4 Beta 1 - Interfaces...

Seems like Mozilla is feeling the heat from its competitors, especially the rapidly growing Google Chrome. As a result, we get to have an early (albeit long-awaited) preview of Firefox 4. Almost two weeks out, I still stick to Google Chrome.

Mostly, it's because the new UI seems to mess up with my copy of Windows 7 x64, terribly. There is no Aero interface, the buttons become very weird when I hide the bookmarks toolbar, and the close, minimize, and maximize buttons were all missing. Well, understandably its a beta release, so Mozilla should be squashing out these bugs for the next release.

Just look how ugly it is.

If you tried it, you might notice there is a Feedback add-on installed with Firefox 4 beta. I think its a good addition, it will be easier for users to provide feedback. However, for now, slightly more than half of feedbacks are Sad (Feedbacks are divided into Happy or Sad). Hopefully Mozilla will take notice of this and build a better browser in the future :D

Oh, and you can view the current feedbacks here: https://input.mozilla.com/

Earlier I mentioned my UI messed up badly. So just being curious, I downloaded the nightly build of Firefox, codenamed Minefield. Minefield is currently version 4 Pre Beta 2. It appears to run fine on my PC, showing the correct UI. And surprisingly, it even fixed my Firefox 4 Beta 1! So yeah, maybe I'll go back and try Firefox 4 again, properly.

Now that looks right.

UPDATE: I finally know the cause of the UI mess; Strata40 theme. While both Firefox 3.6.6 and Firefox 4 Beta 1 (and Minefield 4 Pre Beta 2) are independent installations, they share the same settings. Strata40 is designed for Firefox 3.5+ to mimic the look of Firefox 4 (based on early mockups) and should be used with StrataBuddy. The similarities between Strata40 and the default theme for Firefox 4 caused the confusion. Currently Strata40 is not compatible with Firefox 4. The only way to fix it is to use the default theme, both in Firefox 3.5+ and Firefox 4.