Soroush Javidi

If you install Firefox on a Mac, it'll look ok, and work ok; but won't feel like a proper Mac application. I've read other articles on how to make Firefox more like Safari, here I'll try to give another perspective, but there will be some overlap with such other articles.

1. One problem I had with Firefox 1.5 was that when entering information in a form (say, the google homepage search box), I would press the Tab key and the focus would jump to some other part of the page rather than the 'Google Search' button. Same problem would happen with other forms, where pressing Tab would take me to somewhere outside of the form. If you're like me and don't want to lift a finger off your keyboard unless you have to, then you'd get annoyed! Thankfully, Ethan Marcotte found the same problem unconvenient and has a solution! I'll write it again here for convenience:

• Type about:config in the address bar
• type accessibility.tabfocus in the filter textbox.
• You should see one single entry, with an integer value. Change the value to 7
• Restart yor browser. It should have done the trick!

Ethan also suggests that you add user_pref("accessibility.tabfocus", 7); to your pref.js file which is located in your profile. This was, your setting won't get deleted everytime you update your Firefox installation. (Note: You can find your profile in Library > Application Support > Firefox > Profiles > xxx.default > pref.js ) (Note 2: I'm not sure if this bug is still there in Firefox 2+ as I had the setting in pref.js)

2. The default Firefox widgets (buttons, radio buttons, drop-down menu arrows, etc) are ugly! They'll even look ugly on Windows! Thankfully there's Firefoxy! You can download the app, and it will change (patch?) your Firefox so that it will have beautiful widgets! Makes a big difference, really!

3. The Firefox 1.x skin for Macs was called Pinstripe, which looks very nice! The new Firefox 2.0 skin is good on a Windows PC, but on a Mac it looks out of place. Thankfully, Kevin Gerich has a more up-to-date version of his Pinstripe skin, and it is definately visually pleasing and very Mac like! I love it!

4. Install Uno for an even smoother looks to Firefox's (and your other apps') user interface (UI). It will transform all windows to look like iTunes 7, sort of! It also lets you choose which windows you'd like to have 'unified'.

5. On Safari's bookmark toolbar, you don't have any favicons accompanying the description of a bookmark. This is also the case for Firefox on Mac. On my Windows machine, the favicons help me quickly locate bookmarks (I can read, but pictures and colours help as well!). There's a cure for this, and it invloves adding some line of CSS code in your Firefox profiles' userChrome.css file. Here's the code I have put which is friendly with my Pinstripe theme:

/* add favicons for bookmark items */
.bookmark-item, .toolbarbutton-icon {
margin: 0px !important;
width: 14px !important; /* width and height reduced my 2px for pinstripe theme */
height: 16px !important;
display: inline !important;
}

Change the width and height values to your liking. The ones I have provided should be a reasonable size. I read this in the MozillaZine forums, it is also mentioned in Aronnax's site.

Bonus (6.) Neil Lee provides some great optimized builds of Firefox for G4, G5 and Intel Macs that provide better performance acording to your Mac's architecture. The lastest build provided is at 2.0.0.1.

Hopefully these will be useful to you.Please add your own tips and tricks. How have you customised Firefox on your Mac?