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Firefox 3 gets a toolbar resizer and native Vista menus

August 8th, 2007

Latest Firefox 3 development release (August 8 nightly) got a couple of small but significant improvements among the usual couple of dozens bug fixes.

First, the addition of a resizer to the Customize Toolbar dialog you can add to the toolbar to easily resize the search bar and the location bar, a much requested feature. Currently the search bar is flexible which means it changes size as the window does but you can’t set a specific width unless you hack a bit.

Not surprisingly, since it has just been added, it has some bugs. For example buttons get squeezed if you push the resizer too much towards them and they won’t resize afterwards. But that’s just funny behavior while it gets polished in coming days.

The second improvement gives Firefox’s menus a native look in Windows Vista. Not much else to say but to show in the before and after screenshots below provided by p3nguin and Omega X respectively.

As the number of Vista users keeps increasing it becomes more necessary to deliver a native look and feel and Mozilla is on it and has the update of Firefox theme to better fit in Windows Vista as a priority requirement.

Interestingly, the succinct document also mentions the possibility of removing the menu bar but I doubt it will be done for Firefox 3. Not that it’s a crazy idea. It would really make Firefox look cleaner while keeping it functional (you can try it with the Personal Menu extension), but I don’t think there will be time for a discussion as extensive as a change like this would generate.

Improvements keep dropping in. What’s in your wish list?

Via Mozillalinks.org

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