Maximizing your viewable web page space in FireFox

Personally, FireFox is my favorite web browser because of all the nice add-on plugins that are available. My favorite is Adblock Plus which stops popup ads from appearing when you web browse. There’s also Morning Coffee, CoolPreviews, Download Statusbar, and WeatherBug that I’ve loaded in my FireFox version.

The only bad thing about FireFox, is that it is “top heavy”, requiring a good deal of vertical space at the top of it’s application window for the menubar, icons, bookmark toolbar, and window tabs. Since screen real estate is a premium on the smaller Netbook screens, using FireFox in its default configuration isn’t really suitable for Netbooks. However, you can customize FireFox with custom themes and addon plugins to help reduce all this clutter.

Getting The Ball Rolling…

After going through the obligatory Windows initialization process with my new Dell Mini 9, I proceeded to follow the plan that I outlined in a previous posting. After checking that the system had the A04 BIOS installed, I then used the application called CloneZilla to make a backup image of the virgin Windows XP installation on the disk. With this backup image, I can always reinstall the system files exactly to the original state of the Dell Mini.

I then inserted my USB Flash Drive (bootable) containing the Windows 7 Beta installation files and rebooted the Mini 9 (having the system boot up from a USB drive). After a few seconds, the Windows 7 installation procedure began to start. I followed the simple instructions, and away it went through the installation. When it finally got to the part where it was ready to reboot the system, I still had the USB drive connected to the Mini 9 and the system began the installation procedure again. To remedy this, I simply removed the USB drive and rebooted the system again. It then came up and continued with the final stages of the initialization process. What was a bit discerning, was the length of time Windows 7 took in the final stages of the initialization phase, as it gave no indication that it was doing anything (no hourglass or progress bar displayed). I remained patient, and after several minutes the system finished with the initialization and rebooted again.

Windows 7 then went through a setup process of checking the video performance, etc. which took several minutes before it came up with the main desktop screen. I then followed the suggestions on this web site to install Vista Drivers (for the Dell Mini 12) which are compatible with Windows 7. Finally, with a wireless Internet connection active I did a Windows Update which installed 4 updated drivers on my system.

I have to note, that I used vLite to create a custom Windows 7 installation, where I stripped out components, drivers, etc. that I was certain I wouldn’t need. By doing this, I was able to reduce the final OS installation size down to 5.5 GB of space.

After I got the Win7 OS installed and tweaked to my satisfaction, I began to install the handful of apps that I felt I needed on this machine. I installed everything on the main SSD drive, and the final amount of free space ended up being the following:

So, I’ll probably be in good shape space-wise if I install files on an SDHC card. So now the real evaluation begins…

Windows XP and Vista Tweaks

I stumbled upon this web site (www.blackviper.com) which describes numerous tweaks for a fresh Windows XP Installation. In addition to WinXP tweaks, this site also has Vista and Windows 7 tweaks that you can try out. For all of my current machines, I’ve initiated the XP and Vista tweaks with no ill effects.

Another site for good Vista tweaks is here. And then there’s always the How-To-Geek site that offers lots of good suggestions and tips.