Turn Firefox into a Google Chrome Clone

Required/Recommended Components:

Portable Firefox

Portable Firefox 3.0.3 from Portable Apps/John T. Haller

Extensions

ChromiGlass by Triton (Version 1.01b.1.0.16) *Requires Mozilla Account & Login*

This is what helps to move the tabs to the top of the browser and turn them just the same way as Iron/Chromium/Chrome while providing the Aero glass effect beside the tabs as well.

Personal Menu by Merci Chao (Version 4.1pre)

This helps hides the Menu Bar (the Menu Bar temporarily reappears when you push the Alt key).

Theme

Chromifox by Falconer (Version 1.0)

Sets up the overall Chrome look and feel.

Setup Instructions

  1. Install portable Firefox. (The Desktop is an easy access place for it.)

  2. Once you have your new portable Firefox ready to go, install the Chromifox theme and both extensions.

  3. Restart portable Firefox.

  4. Once you have restarted, you will notice that things look a little bit weird at the top of the browser. You will have top to bottom: your tabs (with lots of Aero glass effect goodness), your menu bar, a odd, very thin Aero glass effect strip, your navigation bar, and the bookmarks bar.

  5. The first thing to do is go to "View" in your Menu Bar, go to Toolbars, and deselect Menu Bar (this is where the Personal Menu extension helps out since this is usually not available in the menu). This also helps to remove the odd, very thin Aero glass effect strip. Optional: If you want to hide the status bar, you can do that at this time as well.

  6. Next, right click in your Navigation Bar and select Customize. You can now pull your search bar into the Customize Window in order to hide it. While you have the Customize Window open, pull the icon for the Personal Menu extension into the Search Bar's former position. This helps to more closely match the two icon appearance on the right side of Iron/Chromium/Chrome and gives you easy access to the additional options for the Personal Menu extension if you would like to use them.

  7. Remove any pre-included bookmarks that came with Portable Firefox that you do not want to keep and add your favorites.

After a few helpful readers made suggestions to the setup, Asian Angel updates the list:

After a little more experimentation, I have the final list of extensions along with the theme used to turn my portable Firefox into an extremely good copy of Iron/Chromium/Chrome.

The extensions that I used help to reproduce the look and also many of the particular functions found in Iron/Chromium/Chrome. Note: The Omnibar extension mentioned in previous comments caused problems with the ChromiGlass extension.

10 Extensions

Theme

Chromifox (Version 1.0)



AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Post a Comment

Previous Post Next Post