Please Note: To use any of these, you will need to have the Firefox add-on Stylish installed.

No Icon Image Until Click – New tab button icon does not appear until you CLICK on it instead of when you hover because there is another style that produces that effect.

Tiny + 3D(Special Effects) – New Tab Button on the tab bar is tiny and when you click on it, it changes.

Left Side New Tab Button – Move the new tab button to the left of the tab bar, instead of the far right of the tab bar.

Smaller New Tab Button – make the new tab button smaller, which changes how it looks in the Firefox interface (makes it more of a button).

Change the New Tab Icon into a Firefox Icon – Want something a little more colorful to show you how to open a new tab?  This user style will replace your new tab icon with the Firefox icon.

Round off the New Tab Button – Give that new tab button a rounded off edge, so it isn’t such a square.

Change the New Tab Button Color – with this, the new tab button will become another color when you hover.

Remove the Open a New Tab Button – Don’t like the new tab button?  With this user style you can get rid of it all together.

Hope you enjoyed these Stylish tweaks from the awesome coders at UserStyles.org.  If you have another favorite style edit for Firefox 3.5’s new tab button, or you fully enjoyed any of these tweaks, be sure to let us know in the comments.

You will want to pickup the bug489729 add-on for Firefox.  This oddly named extension comes with two main controls. You can:

• Disable Detach Tab – use this to disable tab tearing
• Enable Drop URL – use this to be able to drag a tab to your desktop to create a shortcut.

Now, what if you want to keep tab tearing, however you would like the ability to undo a tab detachment?  Then you need to pick up the Undo Detach Tab add-on for Firefox.  As the name says, it will add a context menu option where you can undo your tab tearing.

When your only looking at one single page in Firefox 3.5, for some reason – they still show you the tab bar.  If you would like to disable this feature, it is an easy thing to do.

Via the contact page, I got asked an interesting question.  How can you make Firefox hide the tab bar in Firefox 3.5 when you only have one page open?  From within Firefox, go to Tools, and then Options.  Now, got to the Tabs menu, and un-check the “Always show the tab bar” selection, and hit the OK button.

By default, Firefox 3.5 has this feature turned on – however if you want to have it go back to hiding the tab bar each time you only have one tab open, now you have an easy way to fix it. 

Silvermel

Gradient iCool (Blue)

Noia 2.0 (eXtreme)

NASA Night Launch

Vista-aero

myFireFox

Chromifox Extreme

MidnightFox

Phoenity Reborn

Kempelton

Has your favorite Firefox theme been updated yet?  If so, let me know what it is and how much you like it in the comments.  If not, then it might be time to write a very polite, yet persuasive, e-mail to your favorite theme author to ask him or her to roll out an update.

Love it, or hate it – Firefox got one more addition to it’s browser that seems to have gotten a mixed reaction from the fans. The open new tab button rests at the end of your tab bar in Firefox 3.5 giving you an easier user interface to open a new tab. 

Clicking on the little “+” icon at the end of your open tabs, opens a new tab.  Seems simple enough, and I do like the fact that it gives one more clean way for new users to instantly figure it out. 

How do I remove the new tab button?  Well, if you are handy with editing your userChrome.css file – this should be an easy customization to put in place.  Just add this line:

.tabs-newtab-button {display: none;}

To edit your userChrome.css file, you must first locate it inside of your profile folder.  Depending on your operating system of choice, that location might differ.  Check out "where is my Firefox profile folder?” for more information.

So how do you feel, love the new icon or is it in your way?

The Full Screen Video add-on for Firefox does that.  Once installed, it adds a “Full Screen” menu option, when you right-click on any HTML5 powered video.  As of right now the only two known issues with this awesome extension are:

• When switching to full screen, the video will load and play from the start.
• Full screen is really only implemented on Windows at this point. On other operating systems, it’s merely a maximized window.

Other than that Full Screen Video gives you a simple addition to an already awesome feature of Firefox.  You can pickup this add-on via the Firefox Add-ons web site or check out the official web site for more information on the project.

Want to increase your privacy on your PC?  With the release of Firefox 3.5, our favorite browser now has a Private Browsing mode.  Usually your browser remembers the web sites you have visited, your user names and passwords, your browsing history and more.  However, with this newest addition to the Firefox 3.5 feature list, you can now go incognito on the Internet.

To turn on Private Browsing mode, go to Tools (in the menu bar) and then select Start Private Browsing.  You will then get a popup menu asking you if you would really like to start Private Browsing mode.  Hit the “Start Private Browsing” button to continue.

To be able to tell that you are in Private Browsing mode, the Firefox window title will show (Private Browsing) after the page title you are looking at.  When you are privately browsing, the browser will not remember:

• Visited pages
• Form and Search Bar entries
• Passwords
• Download List entries
• Cookies
• Cached files

If you create a new bookmark while in Private Browsing mode, you will keep it after turning Private Browsing mode off.  Also, if you save or download any files to your PC, those files will not be removed when you stop Private Browsing mode either (they will not though show up in the Downloads window).

To turn Private Browsing mode off, you will want to click on Tools in the menu bar, and the select Stop Private Browsing.  To confirm you have done this correctly, check the Firefox window’s title bar to make sure (Private Browsing) is no longer showing.

Quickly Turn Private Browsing On (or Off)

One tweak or suggestion for this new mode is to give the user a toolbar button to turn it on or off.  The Toggle Private Browsing add-on for Firefox does that.  It gives you the ability to switch between private browsing and regular browsing by adding a button to either the toolbar or status bar.

I hope that helps when it comes to learning the basics about the Private Browsing mode in Firefox.  How do you like it thus far, and how do you think this benefits the browser?

This year I hesitated to download any of the release candidates, because they always seem to spoil some of the surprise.  So, like many of you, I am anxiously awaiting Mozilla’s web site update that says Firefox 3.5 is ready for download.

9:43 AM CST – Firefox 3.5 is out via Mozilla’s web site!

Go here to download.  Be sure to add a comment and leave us your first impressions of the newest version of Firefox!

8:16 AM CST – Looks like we figured out a hacked-up way to get Firefox 3.5 from Mozilla.  Go to this address:

• http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=win&lang=en-US

FileHippo.com also boasts about having Firefox 3.5 ready for download already too.  Why/how is Mozilla letting all these other places jump the gun and beat them to the punch?

7:00 AM CST – Softpedia is claiming to have Firefox 3.5 Final, haven’t tested it yet.  Also, even the president of Brazil seems to be getting into the Firefox 3.5 release party mood:

6:07 AM CST – Nothing much to be seen yet.  I saw on Lifehacker they do have a confirmation that Firefox 3.5 will be released today.  Mashable also has a nice post on what’s on tap for Firefox in 2010 that should hold you over.

More news coming soon!  Keep checking back for more!

Might also be a good time to remind you to subscribe to Firefox Facts via our RSS feed.  Join the over 6,000 happy followers of the feed for free.  You can subscribe by e-mail too!

Keep coming back throughout the day, and we’ll have more coverage that you can shake a stick at.  If you have any well wishes for the Mozilla team, Firefox 3.5 feedback or anything else you wish to share – be sure to leave a comment and join the party!

My personal favorite feature I have seen thus far, that shows the most innovation is the support for embeddable video, without the use of any plugins or third party scripts.  This multimedia embedding functionality of HTML 5 may not be widely used yet, however this does give it a proverbial first kick in the pants to take off and become successful.

Of course, I wouldn’t be doing the Firefox 3.5 project justice if I didn’t mention the speed boost too.  However, I’m not really sure that is something real users will notice.  Maybe it is just me but Firefox 3 for me right now is still pretty darn fast.  You can check out a full list of features via Mozilla’s web site:

• Features List for Firefox 3.5

Seems like this time around Firefox’s newest release has either sneaked up on me, or perhaps isn’t getting as much coverage as the last.  What do you think?  Are you excited yet?

So we are to believe that Firefox and Chrome are both insecure, difficult to use, and unreliable?  The Internet Explorer team might want to check their calendars, because last time I checked – it is June 26th, not April 1st. 

If that isn’t enough – they also have a MythBusting page.  What is your favorite “fact” they are claiming?