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Get Firefox Menu Button in Linux

Sep 20, 2011  By Shawn Powers
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The Windows version of Firefox comes with a fancy menu button in the title bar. Linux doesn't have that exact feature, but you can come close. Shawn Powers shows us how.

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Crap

Janne's picture
Submitted by Janne (not verified) on Wed, 09/21/2011 - 21:25.

The new Firefox is really bad. There are only three reasons to use it, "restore session", ad blocking and laziness.

"Restore session". It's needed a few times a day. It's like Firefox is trying to remind me of the bad old days when I used Windows. Only it fails to bluescreen.

Ad blocking. Is something like Adblock plus available for other browsers?

Laziness. It's natural. Nothing to be ashamed of.

And a final question, what's wrong with the people at Mozilla? Release dates for Firefox:
2008-06-17 Firefox 3 (not supported)
2009-06-30 Firefox 3.5 (not supported)
2010-01-21 Firefox 3.6 (supported)
2011-03-22 Firefox 4 (not supported)
2011-06-21 Firefox 5 (not supported)
2011-08-16 Firefox 6 (supported)
2011-09-19 Firefox 7 (supported)

BFI!

Firefox

texaswriter's picture
Submitted by texaswriter (not verified) on Sun, 09/25/2011 - 23:45.

Your post is kind of general, but what kind of problems are you having?

If I use Firefox all day, literally browsing all day, it is likely to have crashed once, but without any addon for restore session, just restarting firefox restores where I was, exactly, with text in dialog boxes even where I was typing.

Firefox used to never crash, but I think this is do to graphics issues relating to hardware acceleration (graphics acceleration).. I think you can disable that. In the advanced tab of firefox options (in tool menu), click "enable hardware acceleration" to disable, or uncheck... See if that will solve your problem if it is crashing.

Otherwise, the new versions of firefox are MUCH faster, use less memory generally, and have the same level of stability 99% of the time. I'm being patient with Firefox until they resolve graphics adaptor issues (i think it's actually opengl issues!!)

Also, I hope the "lean development cycle" doesn't put people off. Google lean programming or lean development. It's a GOOD thing, not a bad thing.. It means, instead of releases every 2 or 3 years with the new features you've been pining away at, everything gets released to you gradually, which means no feature lag, more secure browsing experience, etc... It really isn't a bad thing in ANY SENSE. I just understand some consumers who aren't familiar with this philosophy will think it is crazy. Even IE is doing something like that. Chrome, IE, and Firefox are all on quick release cycles (IE is releasing browsers MOER quickly than before, not sure if it is "lean", but could be).

Hope this helps,

Firefox 3.6 does all I need.

Jason Arnold's picture
Submitted by Jason Arnold (not verified) on Wed, 11/09/2011 - 21:48.

I don't pine away for any new features. Firefox 2.x was feature complete for my web browsing needs. Firefox 3.6 does all that I need and more. It's rarely crashed at all (I can't recall the last time it did it). I don't plan on upgrading anytime soon. I'll likely still stick with 3.6 for a while even if Moz stops supporting it.

Movable Firefox Button ::

craigevil's picture
Submitted by craigevil (not verified) on Wed, 09/21/2011 - 18:27.

Movable Firefox Button :: Add-ons for Firefox - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/movable-firefox-button/

add the repos...

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 09/21/2011 - 17:16.

Just add the FF stable repo to Ubuntu, then you can run FF latest stable version, in which this is enabled by default, and also enjoy far easier updates to FF than in Windows.

Cool! Thanks.

Marcelo_BR's picture
Submitted by Marcelo_BR (not verified) on Wed, 09/21/2011 - 07:25.

Cool! Thanks.

Windows version of Firefox

DD's picture
Submitted by DD (not verified) on Wed, 09/21/2011 - 06:12.

Wouldn't it be great if you could just put the windows version on your Linux desktop and not have to fiddle with things?
Wouldn't it be better to not have to fire up a virtual windows to use windows stuff ?
or start drinking WINE to run Windows Apps ?
I struggle with these questions daily and I use LTSP heavily, but there is a new option that I have been investigating for a few years. OVD v3 rc6.

Moving closer to Chrome interface?

darkduck's picture
Submitted by darkduck (not verified) on Wed, 09/21/2011 - 04:17.

In few more clicks you can make your Firefox to look even closer to Chrome:
http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2011/08/chromofox.html

Apparently

already registered tracyanne but can't be bothered logging i's picture
Submitted by already registered tracyanne but can't be bothered logging i (not verified) on Tue, 09/20/2011 - 20:09.

the more mouse clicks you are required to make to do something, the better. I'll keep the menu bar, it's less work to get something done.

I figured this out a long

controlaltdeleted's picture
Submitted by controlaltdeleted (not verified) on Tue, 09/20/2011 - 16:28.

I figured this out a long time ago

So did I.

Isaac's picture
Submitted by Isaac (not verified) on Tue, 09/20/2011 - 21:42.

So did I.

Well *I* Learned...

Shawn Powers's picture
Submitted by Shawn Powers on Tue, 09/20/2011 - 22:12.

I learned this trick back in the 1939 German occupation of Poland. The Germans had confiscated all the File|Edit|View menus for use in their war propaganda, and I noticed I could access my menus by using that little button next to the tabs. Of course, back then we didn't call them tabs, we called them "Web Flaps", and they were made mostly of handmade pixels and burlap.

It was in 1941 we all thought Chrome with its native compact menu bar would take over, but since metal was scarce during the war, Chrome was put on the back burner. (This is about the time the old email clients "Pine" and "Elm" came out, since wood was the only available building material.)

After the war, I planned to spread knowledge of the Firefox Menu Button, but users were so glad to have their File|Edit|View menu back, they showed no interest. It wasn't until this month, which marks 72 years since the invasion of Poland I felt people would be ready to accept a menu-less browser. I knew there would be some folks that remembered the pre-war browser, but so many of us have blocked it out, the tech tip seemed worthwhile.

Shawn Powers is an Associate Editor for Linux Journal. You might find him chatting on the IRC channel, or Twitter

I love you guys.

Webmistress's picture
Submitted by Webmistress on Thu, 09/22/2011 - 11:51.

That is all.

Katherine Druckman is webmistress at LinuxJournal.com. You might find her on Twitter or at the Southwest Drupal Summit

Ha! That's nothing.

dwasifar's picture
Submitted by dwasifar (not verified) on Wed, 09/21/2011 - 11:48.

I learned it from a huge black rectangular obelisk that one day appeared near our cave. Before that, we would just screech and jump up and down if we wanted to change Firefox's settings, but the obelisk taught us all about tools. We learned to hit it with a bone to change the menus.

We also learned that the Leopard was our enemy, but he's gone now.

Firefox Menu Button

American_Jesus's picture
Submitted by American_Jesus (not verified) on Tue, 09/20/2011 - 11:46.

I've made some Firefox menu buttons, you can install without installing any extension, only need to copy the code to ~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxx.default/chrome/userChrome.css
without the
@namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul);

or for easly install use Stylish for firefox.

Menu buttons create by me:
Firefox 4 menu button v2 [Linux]

Firefox 4 menu windows look-alike [Linux]