According to my poll about 1 in 4 of you readers have already switched to Firefox 3 and almost everyone else will switch after their extensions are compatible. I am considering switching myself but before I do I need to tweak the heck out of it like I tend to do.

Now after a bit of searching I really couldn’t find any good resources out there for tweaking Firefox 3 stuff so I thought I should create one and share it with you!

So here I have compiled a list of Firefox 3 only userChrome.css tweaks. Here are instructions if needed.

Firefox 3 userChrome.css snippets

/* Specify a maxiumum height for the Autocomplete list */
#PopupAutoCompleteRichResult {
  max-height: 100px !important;
}

/* Remove splitter between the URL and Search bars to save space */
#urlbar-search-splitter {
  display: none !important;
}

/* Changed from #bookmarks-menu in FF2 */
#bookmarksMenu {
  display: none !important;
}

/* Remove the Bookmark star, I use Ctrl-D instead */
#star-button {
  display: none !important;
}

/* Remove the URL bar Go button, not necessary IMO ;) */
#go-button {
  display: none !important;
}

/* Style the new auto-complete list */
.autocomplete-richlistitem {
  background: #222222 !important;
  color: #FFFFFF !important;
  padding: 0px !important;
  margin: 0px !important;
}
.autocomplete-richlistitem:hover,
.autocomplete-richlistitem[selected="true"] {
  background: #444444 !important;
}

Bonus tweak that also works with Firefox 2 (thank you Lifehacker):

/* Make the active tab wider (when you have a few tabs open) */
#content tab[selected="true"] {
  min-width: 200px !important;
}

I’m sure there will be more to add to this list by the time Firefox 3 is released so stay tuned! Of course most of the other userChrome.css tweaks for Firefox 2 work with Firefox 3 as well. If you have any entries to add to this please share in the comments.

Reader Chuck recently asked about enhancing new labels for Thunderbird:

I’ve been trying to figure out how to change some of this stuff for a long time. My one question though - how do you change the label backgrounds for additional labels you have added(other than the default 5 that come with Thunderbird).

I realized that this is probably more common than one might think. So I’m going to share my answer with all of you.

This customization goes back to Personalizing Thunderbird’s chrome, but note that you can also do this with the Stylish Add-on for Thunderbird. In this case it’s not necessary to dig into your userChrome.css file, but if you want to than here are instructions.

First you need to create some new tags in Thunderbird by going to Edit > Preferences > Display > Tags (Linux & Solaris) or Tools > Options > Display > Tags (Windows) and adding them. Pay close attention to which color you picked so that you can find out the color value you need by hovering over this image –>.

Open up userChrome.css or your New Stylish Script dialog and copy this code in there once for each tag you create.

/* Change these styles to make messages with your new tag shine */
/* Normal message row */
treechildren::-moz-tree-cell(lc-******) {
    border-bottom: 1px solid #FF0000 !important;
    background-color: #FFCCCC !important;
}
/* Message row text */
treechildren::-moz-tree-cell-text(lc-******) {
    color: #000000 !important;
}
/* Message row background when selected */
treechildren::-moz-tree-cell(lc-******, selected) {
    background-color: #FF0000 !important;
}
/* Message row text when selected */
treechildren::-moz-tree-cell-text(lc-******, selected) {
    color: #FFFFFF !important;
}

Now, we are going to need to replace ****** with hexadecimal (0-F) characters representing the color you chose. These colors are in the form RRGGBB with each hexadecimal pair representing the intensity of Red, Green, and Blue respectively. You can also completely customize the color, border and whatever else for this tag by changing the CSS within each selector in the code above.

You can also use Twister MC’s label colors (thank you Twister MC) but it’s good to know how to customize it however YOU want, because the customizations don’t stop there.

How have you tweaked the look of your tags in Thunderbird? Share in the comments!

First I wanted to mention that one of our brilliant readers, erlando, has made a nice suggestion for Highlighting Search Results script that makes it even better! It really is quite brilliant so you should check it out!

Also, I have been busy adding a few new features here which you probably noticed. I thought I might give a quick overview of new stuff you’ll find around here that might be useful to you:

• New contact form
• You can now register and login with your OpenID
• Security upgraded for login and spam blocking
• Upgraded search, of course
• A bunch of little stuff that you might notice…

Anyway I hope you like the changes and feel free to contact me at emwendelin [at) gmail (dot] com if you have a question about it or want to ask how I did a certain component :)

Happy belated pi day!