I’ve been playing around with Internet Explorer 7 latest beta version, and although I definitely prefer the comfort, security and features Firefox brings, I appreciate some enhancements including the elimination by default of the menu bar, that uppermost toolbar where most commands reside.

So I decided to try to reproduce it in Firefox and found that Compact Menu, developed by Chris Neale, does a great job reducing the clutter and gaining screen space. The latest version is not available yet at addons.mozilla.org so you will have to visit the extension’s web site. The only difference I noticed in the latest version is the use of a smaller icon (Chris’ logo) instead of the large Firebird icon.

Once installed, in the View menu, select Toolbars and Customize. You can drag either the Menu button or the CDN logo button to the toolbar and select what menus you want to show. Since the menu toolbar can’t be hidden you have to drag all the buttons and text boxes in the navigation toolbar to the now empty menu bar. Then, hide the Navigation toolbar (right click on the Navigation toolbar and uncheck the Navigation option) and you are done.

In the end, my toolbar now looks like this.

You can always go back to the original configuration by right-clicking a toolbar, select Customize… and press the Reset Default Set button.