How To: Tweak Firefox' look to fit into Vista/Windows 7

One of the many features of Firefox 3 was native UI-integration on Windows XP, Vista, Mac and Linux. While Firefox’ Mac-version does look rather native, Mozilla completely dropped their efforts to take advantage of Windows Vista’s (or 7’s) Aero Glass effects.

Because Firefox has such a vibrant addon-community, you can achieve the effect below by using 1 custom theme and 2 add-ons:

The stuff you’ll need to achieve this look:

1. The Theme: Strata Reloaded which you can find here.

   Just hit the ‘Add to Firefox’-button, accept it and let it churn away. You may want to deny the restart, since we’re not done installing add-ons yet.

2. Add-on 1: Glasser, download here.

   While the theme above introduce prettier icons and the colored bar, Glasser makes Firefox’ chrome transparent like (Internet) Explorer windows. The latest version of Glasser is only compatible with the latest Firefox 3.1 beta. If you click the older version link, you can select the version that’s compatible with the latest stable version of Firefox.

3. Add-on 2: Menu Mod, here.

   You can hide the menu bar as Internet Explorer does by default by installing the Menu Mod add-on. Once installed, press F2 on the keyboard to toggle the menu bar’s visibility.

“Et voila, c’est tout” as the French say. It’s a pity Mozilla didn’t make this look the default one, it’s much nicer and certainly more native.

Many thanks to the respective theme/add-on developers.