Firefox 5 and hiding the navigation bar

I got prompted to update my Firefox 4 to Firefox 5 beta last week. New features include better standards support, speed improvements, better integration with Linux desktops, in-browser software channel selection and support for CSS animations. The final version of FF5 is expected to ship on June 21th.
Firefox 5 will probably not include one of the much discussed hidden features in Chrome 13; the possibility to hide the navigation bar, but Mozilla indeed is experimenting with that as well. I’ve got Mozillalabs Prospector’s Simplify Firefox add-on installed on my netbook and in that 1024X600 context the extra screen real estate is a huge advantage. On the other hand, on my 1440X900 work laptop screen I don’t need (or want) those measly extra pixels. Maybe hiding the navigation bar should be an option which is by default off on normal-sized screens and is automatically turned on for screens with a netbook-like resolution?

2 thoughts on “Firefox 5 and hiding the navigation bar”

  1. I really like the fact that they keep improving firefox performance wise. But why in hell would they mess with the layout? millions of people are used to the 3.x layout and they totaly changed it.
    Even small things like “open in new tab” has been swapped places with open in new window so damn annoying.
    but anyway it runs far smoother then IE 🙂

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  2. Your post was only written 5 months ago and now Firefox has released version 7 already. But anyway, I like the current layout of the browser, with the tabs on top, the one-button refresh/stop,… Though, I’m not sure why they need to release major versions so fast after each other, I guess they have their reasons and I’m not one to tell them what to do :).
    The real annoying problem is that plugin maintainers need to update their plugins more often to be compatible with major versions which annoys the end-user. But I’ll live hehe.

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