Last month Adam showed you six Firefox extensions that enable Chrome's best features, but today reader Asian Angel takes it a few steps further and creates an almost identical-looking Chrome clone using 10 Firefox extensions and one theme. The result is an amazing close reproduction of Chrome's look and behavior. Take a look at the before and after photos, then get the extension and theme list Asian Angel compiled. Update: Asian Angel posts an update to this process with a final list of extensions and styles.Before Screenshot: A clean installation of Firefox and its default look on Windows Vista.
After Screenshot: With the Chrome cloning theme and extensions installed, here's what Firefox looks like.
On her first pass, Asian Angel explains:
This little experiment of mine was done using a clean install of portable Firefox (missing ads in screenshots due to Hosts file) since the ChromiGlass extension is experimental. I have no idea if it will cause problems with other extensions or not, so I recommend the clean install to try this out. Done on a Vista SP1 system. Hopefully the Aero glass effect should work on all systems. 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
Install portable Firefox. (The Desktop is an easy access place for it.)
Once you have your new portable Firefox ready to go, install the Chromifox theme and both extensions.
Restart portable Firefox.
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.
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.
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.
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
ChromiGlass (Version 1.01b.1.0.16)
DOM Inspector (Version 2.0.1)
Download Statusbar (Version 0.9.6.3)
Location Bar² (Version 1.0.3)
New Tab Button On Tab Right (Version 0.5.6)
Personal Menu (Version 4.1 pre)
Prism (Version 0.2.1)
Resizeable Text Area (Version 0.1d)
Show Go (Version 1.0.3)
Stealther (Version 1.0.6)
Theme
Chromifox (Version 1.0)
Here are two more after photos with the extensions and theme applied:
Fabulous work, Asian Angel!
Turn Firefox into a Google Chrome Clone