[Guide]Making Firefox look and sound like IE.


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Firstly I suppose most of you are wondering, "why would anyone want to make Firefox look like Internet Explorer (IE)?" For me it was a personal quest since I prefer the IE visuals to the Firefox visuals, but love the functionality Firefox provides. Whatever your reasons this guide should help you make Firefox look and sound like IE. First though heres a little sample of how the final result should look:

firefoxie9um.th.jpg

Visuals

Theme

Firstly we are going to need to make Firefox look like IE and we can achieve this using the Internet Explorer XP Theme for Firefox by Bamm Gabriana, you can find and install the theme here. Alternatively if you are old school, and would prefer the IE5 look then you can install the Internet Explorer Theme from here. Once you have this theme installed, select it from the the themes window (Tools > Themes > Double click the theme) and then restart Firefox.

themesdialog8hf.th.jpg

Once you've done this you will be wondering why there is no back text next to the "Back" button. This is easily fixed by right clicking on a blank area of the the toolbar and selecting the "Customize" option, then on the dialog box select "Text". Note: You can add the Side Searchbar (and any other buttons you would like on the toolbar) from this toolbar by dragging and dropping it on the toolbar after you install the More Buttons extension.

customize4yo.jpg

text7az.th.jpg

Icons

The next step is to install another Bamm Gabriana product which is the IE Icons. I must note before you proceed with this that you cannot uninstall these Icons using the Firefox interface, you must delete the sub directory from within the Mozilla Firefox directory. To install the IE Icons click here.

More Buttons and XP Styles

Want more functions within Firefox? Then you want More Buttons again by Bamm Gabriana. This will allow you have the Side Searchbar just like IE. This is an optional extra that I personally recommend you have, you can install it from here. The final extra here is the XP Window Styles extension, basically this will allow Firefox to adapt its looks slightly depending on whether you are using Windows Luna Theme or Windows Classic Theme, you can find it here.

Sound

Popup Sound Extension

For the authentic IE sounds to work first you will need the Popup Sound Extension by Nathar Leichoz which can be found and installed here.

The Sounds

The sounds required to use with the extension above are provided in the .zip attached to this post. The files can be found in your Windows directory if you do not wish to download this file. Each sound should be used for the following:

Windows Xp Start.wav - The "Click" sound.

Windows XP Notify.wav - The "Download Finish" sound.

Windows XP Pop-up Blocked.wav - The "Popup Blocked" sound.

To use these sounds simply start up Firefox with the above extension installed and then select them from their location. I recommend unzipping the file to the Mozilla Firefox directory on your hard disk, which will install them in a directory called "sounds".

popupsound9bg.th.jpg

Your done, that should be just about everything you need to give yourself the Firefox/IE experience. Enjoy!

Credits

Bamm Gabriana (http://www.bamm.gabriana.com)

Nathar Lechioz (http://dragtotab.mozdev.org)

Imageshack (http://www.imageshack.us)

Myself

sounds.zip

I did that to the Guest account's Firefox profile :lol:

Icons

The next step is to install another Bamm Gabriana product which is the IE Icons. I must note before you proceed with this that you cannot uninstall these Icons using the Firefox interface, you must delete the sub directory from within the Mozilla Firefox directory. To install the IE Icons click here.

The link works but I'm having problems installing it. It said some 241- error in the Extensions window. Maybe the file is corrupt.

Where is the folder to uninstall the Bamm IE Icons? i have looked in "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox" but cannot tell which folder to delete :(

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