mcauley-penney / microfox

Firefox interface styling for keyboard-driven users

µfox

Make Firefox less visually intrusive.

Principles and Goals 📝

µfox is for users that do not like

• unnecessary or draining interface items, positioning, and use of space
• animation and jitter

The overall goal of these styles is to eliminate or improve a lot of instances of these distractions in the Firefox interface. The subgoals below discuss how I am currently approaching these principles.

Findbar

Goal: reduce the cognitive load of using the findbar by

1. taking it away from the edge of the screen and bringing it closer to the rest of the content in the browser
2. Minimally styling it, eliminating buttons and trying to use sane default options

Toolbar

Goal: increase valuable screen real estate and minimize visual interference by making the toolbar

1. hidden when it is not focused
2. minimally styled by
   • reducing movement, for example by eliminating borders that change color or expand
   • removing buttons which can have their features accessed by the URL bar, for example, using about:downloads instead of a dedicated button

Warnings and Tips ⚠️

1. µfox eliminates the tab bar completely. You will need an alternative. Try Tree Style Tab or Sideberry.
2. See Firefox's shortcuts list and choose your operating system to see keybindings that you can use to access the UI elements that you wish to see.

Suggestions 💁

For a more keyboard-driven or minimal experience, try

1. Vimium
2. Tree Style Tab

Credits 🏆

• Firefox CSS

microfox's Issues

Long search queries write over buttons

Problem

Expected Behavior

The URL bar should terminate before the rest of the elements in the toolbar.