Web-based to-do list Remember the Milk‘s streamlined interface and excellent shortcut key support are great out of the box, but there are a few useful fixes and tweaks, too.I’ve compiled a short list of user styles and scripts that can be used with the Stylish or Greasemonkey extension in Firefox to make RTM much friendlier. Let’s take a look.
Firefox with Greasemonkey or Stylish: Google Reader’s recent redesign did streamline its interface, but ever-resourceful reader Dustin wants to maximise the feed reading area even more with his new “Absolutely Compact” user style. Google Reader Absolutely Compact packs even more text onto the screen than Google’s new default look. Be warned: you’ve got to be a heavy keyboard shortcut user to enjoy this one, since the style strips away much of the interface. It also kills much of the whitespace in headline-only view, which can make scanning a bit harder on your peepers. Before you go install Greasemonkey or Stylish to try it out, compare before and after screenshots.
Firefox with Greasmonkey (and other browsers): The Helvetireader theme for Google Reader strips away the bells and whistles and offers a minimal interface redesign for keyboard shortcut users. Install Helvetireader in Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension, Opera, a Chromium nightly build, or Safari with Greasekit. With Helvetireader enabled, GReader uses red and black Helvetica font and white background with a light grey gradient. Especially suited to work in Reader as a Fluid or Prism standalone app, Helvetireader is a free download.
Helvetireader [via Waxy]If the high unread item counts in Google Reader are making browsing your feeds feel more like a chore than relaxed browsing, hide them using the Remove Unread Count user style, for use with the Stylish or Greasemonkey extension. The style hides all individual subscription and folder unread counts—only the count in the title bar remains—and developer says he built it to get rid of Reader guilt.
Reader RJ writes in with his/her perfect combination of extensions and user styles that make working with tabs easier: TabMix Plus, Locationbar² and Stylish (with a custom style). RJ explains:
Globex Designs releases version 2.0 of their Gmail Redesigned skin which fixes over 40 bugs and is speedier than ever. Expect an update to the Better Gmail 2 extension with the new Redesigned 2.0 version to hit your browser sometime tomorrow.
Firefox with Stylish or Greasemonkey: The talented designers who redesigned your Gmail are back with that similar look for Google Calendar. The Google Calendar Redesigned user style is now available for download as a public beta, and gives your GCal that slick look you’ve come to love in your inbox. After the jump, get a few full screenshots of what your GCal looks like wearing the Redesigned style.
Now that you’ve minimised Firefox’s chrome with a few good user styles, it’s time to maximize your surfing area. Just by moving a few small things around you can have all of Firefox’s menu and location bar’s features, but without all the real estate-hogging. Check out a video screencast of how to consolidate Firefox’s chrome after the jump.
Now that you’ve been running Firefox 3 for almost a week, it’s time to customise its interface to your liking with a few great user styles. Just like you can add user scripts (JavaScript) to web pages with the Greasemonkey extension, you can also add user styles (CSS) to Firefox’s interface with the Stylish extension. While lots of user styles just skin specific web sites with a new look, many can actually improve the browser itself by changing the look and behaviour of menus, tabs, dialogs, and buttons—Firefox’s “chrome.” Let’s take a look at some of the best user styles which tweak, customise, enhance, and streamline Firefox’s chrome.
One noticeable change between Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 is the yellow address bar background, which turned on in Firefox 2 when you visited encrypted web sites—the ones that start with https://. After much debate among the developers, Firefox 3 dropped that visual cue, but on Windows, with a little userChrome.css tweak, you can have that yellow background back. Here’s how.
