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You can change Firefox’s default window icon to any icon you want, by following these steps:

1. Go to the folder you installed Firefox in (e.g. C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\) and then go to the subfolder chrome.
2. While in chrome, create a new subfolder called icons, then go to that folder and create yet another subfolder called default. The full path to this folder could be C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\chrome\icons\default\.
3. Choose the icon you want to use (on Windows use .ico files, on Linux use .xpm files) and then place it in this folder and rename it to main-window.[ext], e.g. main-window.ico on Windows and main-window.xpm on Linux.

In addition to the main window, you can also change the icon on the Bookmark Manager and JavaScript Console. The icon names are bookmark-window.[ext] and jsconsoleWindow.[ext], respectively.

After this is done, restart Firefox and you should be able to see your chosen icon in the title of the browser windows.

This tip will make the toolbars use less space around the buttons, allowing Firefox to use more space for the actual web pages. This also affects additional toolbars such as the Googlebar. Add the following code to your userChrome.css file:

/* Remove extra padding from the Navigation Bar */
.toolbarbutton-1, .toolbarbutton-menubutton-button {
   padding: 2px 3px !important;
}
.toolbarbutton-1[checked=”true”], .toolbarbutton-1[open=”true”],
.toolbarbutton-menubutton-button[checked=”true”],
.toolbarbutton-menubutton-button[open=”true”] {
   padding: 4px 1px 1px 4px !important;
}

Some people like to place all their Firefox toolbar items on the same row as the menu. In order to save horizontal space, you can remove top menu items that you don’t use. Add the following code to your userChrome.css file:

/* Remove the Go and Help menus
   Id’s for all toplevel menus:
   file-menu, edit-menu, view-menu, go-menu, bookmarks-menu, tools-menu, helpMenu */
#go-menu, #helpMenu {
   display: none !important;
}

You can customize the display and location of the close tab button in the tab bar by using about:config to edit the preference browser.tabs.closeButtons. Values:

0

Display a close button on the active tab only

1

(Default) Display close buttons on all tabs

2

Don’t display any close buttons

3

Display a single close button at the end of the tab bar (Firefox 1.x behavior)

If you don’t want the title of the active tab to be bold, add the following code to your userChrome.css file:

/* Make the active tab not bold */

tab[selected=”true”] {

   font-weight: normal !important;

}

In addition to changing themes, you can personalize Firefox even more by using your own toolbar background image. Add the following code to your userChrome.css file:

/* Use a background image for the toolbars:
   (Substitute your image file for background.gif) */

 menubar, toolbox, toolbar, .tabbrowser-tabs {
   background-image: url(”background.gif”) !important;
   background-color: none !important;
   }

It’s easiest to place the image file in the same location as the userChrome.css file. The image can be of any image format supported by Firefox.

If you want the menus to appear native to the Windows Classic appearance, add the following code to your userChrome.css file:

/* Windows Classic (9x/Me/2000) style Menus */
menupopup, popup {
   border: 2px solid !important;
   -moz-border-top-colors: ThreeDLightShadow ThreeDHighlight;
   -moz-border-right-colors: ThreeDDarkShadow ThreeDShadow;
   -moz-border-bottom-colors: ThreeDDarkShadow ThreeDShadow;
   -moz-border-left-colors: ThreeDLightShadow ThreeDHighlight;
   padding: 1px !important;
}
menubar > menu[disabled=”true”] {
   border: 1px solid transparent !important;
}
menubar > menu[_moz-menuactive=”true”] {
   border-top: 1px solid ThreeDHighlight !important;
   border-right: 1px solid ThreeDShadow !important;
   border-bottom: 1px solid ThreeDShadow !important;
   border-left: 1px solid ThreeDHighlight !important;
   background-color: transparent !important;
   color: MenuText !important;
}
menubar > menu[_moz-menuactive=”true”][open=”true”]  {
   border-top: 1px solid ThreeDShadow !important;
   border-right: 1px solid ThreeDHighlight !important;
   border-bottom: 1px solid ThreeDHighlight !important;
   border-left: 1px solid ThreeDShadow !important;
}

(From marketingvox.com)

Firefox had a nearly 28 percent average use rate in Europe in the beginning of July, with growth in marketshare in all 32 European countries studied by XiTi Monitor - though Internet Explorer remains the dominant browser in Europe, albeit steadily losing users - writes MarketingCharts.

Between July 2 and 8, 2007, the average visit share of a European country for Internet Explorer was 66.5 percent whereas it was 73.3 percent a year earlier, from July 3 to 9, 2006, accoding to XiTi. Opera was third with a visit share of 3.5 percent.

Globally, Firefox use is highest in Oceania, which gained 4.1 percentage points from March; it is the largest Firefox user with a use rate of 28.9 percent, ahead of Europe’s 27.8 percent.

Firefox is also gaining ground in the other continents, growing to nearly 19 percent in North America, and growing 30 percent in South America to account for 15.5 percent of the browser market.

MarketingCharts provides more data from XiTi, including the latest results from the battle between the most recent browser versions: Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.

(from Wired.com, by Michael Calore)

The morning’s executive briefing sessions are underway here at OSCON. Tim O’Reilly just led a discussion on stage about Firefox add-ons — what they’ve achieved, how the open source model has shaped their development and what they contribute to the web.

Sitting on the panel were Mozilla’s Mike Shaver, who oversees the Firefox extension developer community, as well as two of the ecosystem’s most successful developers in terms of sheer user numbers: AllPeers CTO Matthew Gertner and StumbleUpon’s Garrett Camp.

One of Tim’s first questions was a biggie: Why does Firefox’s performance suffer when I install extensions? Shaver handled that one, explaining that the browser’s architecture lets developers interact with any of the services within Firefox. Ultimately, it’s a trade off. Developers get the infinite access which allows them to shape the user experience of the browser, but that sometimes results in a performance hit.

O’Reilly also asked what happened to Netscape creator Mark Andreesen’s original vision of the browser as a platform. Is that where we’ve arrived? The panelists agreed, saying that Firefox extensions are building upon that vision. Shaver gave his view of the browser’s position as a way to access “the best software platform we’ve ever developed as an industry — the web.”

Another interesting note came from Camp. Illustrating to the passion of free software users, he said that when StumbleUpon changes features in its Internet Explorer toolbar, he hears near silence. When a change happens on the Firefox side, the company gets flooded with e-mail about every little detail.

The final question drew some laughs: Are we moving into a world where Windows, Mac OS X and Linux are just device drivers for Firefox? An interesting topic, but the clock had run out and none of the panelists really had time to answer that in full. I guess the question will remain rhetorical.