Rubenerd

I've had a surprising number of emails and tweets from people asking about my move to SeaMonkey, so I've decided to write a few posts about how I tweaked it to work for me. This is the first, on messing around with the interface :).

Simplifying the interface

Despite its modern core based on Firefox, SeaMonkey's user interface is still derived largely from Netscape Communicator. It can be easily tweaked to resemble contemporary browsers such as Firefox and Chrome though if you prefer.

1. Right click the Navigation toolbar and choose Customise…
2. Click Use Small Icons
3. Choose Icons from the Show listbox.
4. Drag the Search button off the toolbar
5. Drag on the Search box
6. Boom!

If you're a Chrome user, you can skip step 5 and use SeaMonkey's shortcuts for search! You can either type "g [terms]" into the navigation box for a Google search, or enter any terms and choose the "Search Google for [terms]" that appears.

Modern theme

Aside from having retro appeal that you'd be a fool to not take advantage of, I think SeaMonkey Modern it still has real class, particularly in the mail application.

1. Go to the View menu
2. Choose SeaMonkey Modern under Apply Theme
3. Restart, boom!

Using userChrome.css

Many of the userChrome.css tricks I blogged about for Firefox back in 2010 work with SeaMonkey too. If you haven't made a userChrome.css file yet and really want to customise SeaMonkey to an extreme:

1. Open your SeaMonkey profile folder
2. Create a folder called chrome (ironically enough!)
3. Create a file within chrome called userChrome.css

Below is my file. I err on the side of minimalism, so you may want to adjust to your own tastes!

/* RENDER PRIMARY FONT MORE COMPACT */
* {
    font-size: 10px !important;
}
 
/* MONOSPACE FONT FOR LOCATION BOX */
#urlbar {
    font-family: monospace !important;
}
 
/* MERGE STOP AND RELOAD BUTTONS
   STOP MUST BE PLACED BEFORE RELOAD TO WORK */
#stop-button[disabled="true"],
#stop-button:not([disabled]) + #reload-button {
    display:none !important;
}
 
/* HIDE SUPERFLUOUS ELEMENTS */
.autocomplete-history-dropmarker,
.search-go-button,
#star-button,
.tabs-closebutton,
.tabs-newbutton,
.toolbarbutton-menubutton-dropmarker,
tooltip {
    display:none !important;
}

All done!

Part two I'll be tacking importing and extensions, stay tuned! ^_^