Mod Firefox into Chrome in 9 Easy Steps

You might have heard it already.

If you haven’t then hear it from me. “It’s an exciting time in the Softwares and Services World”. Everyone is eagerly awaiting the release of Google Wave, Google Chromium (Google Chrome for Linux), Mozilla Firefox 3.5, Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. Everything expected to be released to the public by the end of 2009 or the begin of 2010.

Of course, there are some versions of Chromium out there for developers and testers to try out. I tried it out, and was sad it kept crashing.

I am a fan of Firefox. I love and appreciate the efforts the Open Source community has taken to support it. With the release of Google’s Chrome there were several changes to the definitions of the Browsers. The one thing that pulled me towards Google Chrome, was the browsing space (the real estate) and opening the source code of a page in a tab rather than in a windo

And in the things I loved in Firefox where the plugins. Firebug, TwitterFox, WebDeveloper were plugins so important that I couldn’t just snap Firefox.

The most important problem for me with Firefox was the space available. With too many toolbars, there wasn’t much space for me in Firefox. When I came home during my Summer Holidays, I used Google Chrome on my home desktop with Windows XP. I loved it. There were many features too, that were useful when I needed didn’t eat my space. I wanted to have it on my laptop which runs Linux Mint 7.

Because of the crashing issues with Chromium, I moved back to Firefox.

Then I thought. Space is the prime reason why I need Chrome. Why not make Firefox give me the space I need?!

The Chrome design is really good and thanks to Firefox’s extendability, now I have a Firefox emulating Google Chrome, with the features I need and I am happy.

It looks like Chrome, but it’s Firefox!

Steps to Mod Firefox to Look like Chrome

1. Install Chrome Package. Yes, it is an experimental package. So, quickly register at the firefox website and download it. Till now it has got me no problems. It gives Firefox the overall Chrome look.
2. To bring the downloads to the Status Bar, install Download StatusBar.
3. For the Chrome’s “incognito” feature, install the Distrust addon. It emulates the Chrome feature better than the Stealther addon. Distrust adds an “Eye” icon to the status bar. Click on it and you are in Incongnito mode.
4. For more space, I installed the Hide Menubar addon. With this you can toggle the MenuBar using the Alt button.
5. Install the DOM Inspector. This is to add the DOM Inspector feature of Chrome.
6. For the green triangle, representing Go in Chrome’s location bar, install Show Go.
7. For highlighting the main domain in the Location Bar, install LocationBar2.
8. For integrating the Search Bar into the Location Bar, install Peers, the missing search for Firefox. Then remove the Search Bar, by pulling it into the Toolbar Customize window. Open it from View>Toolbars>Customize.
9. To view Source of webpages in Tab rather than a new window, I installed the Source Viewer Tab.

These 9 steps will slip your Mozilla Firefox into Google Chrome’s outfit! Try it out today!

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