Disabling menu bar, navigation transparency in Firefox 4 on Windows 7, Vista

Why?

Firefox 4 which was released on March 22nd, 2011 is a very fast and featured browser with tons of improvements over previous versions. But like always, Mozilla has changed something in the browser that I don't like, and this time it is the transparency of the new title bar. It is quite distracting, and infact it was so distracting that I needed to figure out how to disable the transparency.

I heard some suggestions to disable Windows Aero, but this isn't really an option since it's disabled on a system basis and what if I only don't like the transparency in Firefox? I found a simple fix by using the features available in userChrome.css to modify the layout of the Firefox.

userChrome.css

@namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul);
#TabsToolbar, #PersonalToolbar, window, page, dialog, wizard, prefwindow {
 background-color: -moz-dialog !important;
}

How do I edit userChrome.css?

This tutorial assumes that you have Hide Extensions for known file types unchecked in Windows Explorer Folder Options.

  1. Open Windows Explorer and enter %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles into the Address Bar,
  2. On screen you will see a folder with a random name (eg. 7q4fse53.default,) select the folder,
  3. Select the chrome folder in your profile for Mozilla Firefox,
  4. If a file named userChrome.css does not exist: create it by right clicking and selecting "New Text Document" under the New context menu, and rename the newly created file to userChrome.css,
  5. Open the file userChrome.css in Notepad or a text editor of your choice, and paste the content from the userChrome.css section (from above) into the file,
  6. Save the changes you have made to userChrome.css in your text editor,
  7. Restart Mozilla Firefox to see the changes you have made to your userChrome.css file.

It would be helpful if Mozilla made some of these layout changes configurable, this reminds me of the AwesomeBar (TM) feature which not everyone thinks is so awesome. But at least we have userChrome.css, and addons for layout changes.

One thought to “Disabling menu bar, navigation transparency in Firefox 4 on Windows 7, Vista”

  1. hello
    thank you for your idea
    but it doesn't work for me …
    could you show me your userchrome.css ?
    thank you

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