firefox vs web applications, part III

So after all the trouble my idea from the last post gave me, after seeing how Firefox could not really handle different menu/nav/status bar settings for different windows, because new windows would always get it wrong, I thought why can't we just get rid of that menu bar for all windows. Internet Explorer and Google Chrome don't have a menu bar either! Now, how other browsers look is clearly not an argument for me to change my browser, but I know that a lot of other people like to copy things and so I thought: "There must be a Firefox Add-on that gives Firefox a Google-Chrome-like skin." I've used any skins myself, but I know it's a big thing and if it can help me, let's look for it! And indeed! Even on the first page of recommended Firefox Add-Ons I found one that's named "Personal Menu" and it's prime feature is "to disable the menu bar". I installed it and it's great! It offers a few extra buttons for the nav bar (like a bookmarks and a history button) plus one button that can be entirely customized to contain just those few menu items that one personally needs.
Here's how my Firefox looks like now:

I am keeping the location box and the search box, because I use both often. I like how Firefox now manages bookmarks and history from the location bar!

For comparison, on Windows my Firefox still looks as before:

As you can see, I saved some space by getting rid of the refresh/stop/home buttons which I all control by keyboard shortcuts. Actually I also control the back/forward function by keyboard but I felt that a web browser just doesn't look like a web browser without those buttons. Also, I switched to "small buttons".
Now, I saved one line of screen real estate and I like it! On many pages I still need to do F11 (full screen) to read them well, but I think the browser has become better with much effort. That's good!

Firefox vs web applications part II (notes)

apparently the only way to remove the menubar from a window is to open a new window via javascript (JS) window.open(url, window_name, 'menubar=no'). This code does not work from a bookmarklet (at least not naively), so I wrote a simple "web application launcher page" which contains links to my web applications via JS.
The syntax of the above JS function also supports a parameter 'status=no' to switch of the status-bar, but this is ignored by Firefox. Actually, whatever the parameters for the new window are, Firefox will recognize the "intention" of opening a new window and will then do it using its own parameters: the location bar will always be visible, but grayed-out (read-only, which is very sensible in general, but not so much  for my applications), and the status bar will be just as in the current setting (menu) "View - Status bar". Since the menu is disabled in the new window, I have to disable the status bar manually in my "web application launcher" window and then click on the link, which gives me a new window without status bar. The same is true for the location bar. I have to disable it manually before I click on the JS link. This is more complicated than it should be!
Best would really be to let me disable the menubar manually, too, and then have the browser simply remember the setting of status/menu/location bar for each website where I actively changed it. Being at it once, it should also remember the window size and position for each website where I manually change it.

There is also a terribly nasty bug: When I open Facebook in this way without a menu bar (no matter what the settings for status and location bar), it will open without scroll bars, but GMail with the same settings has scrollbars! Fortunately I could fix it by adding "scrollbars=yes" to the window.open() call. Just perplexing that GMail does not need it.

Next step for me is to try living with my javascript launcher page and see if it does the job. Stay tuned and tell me if you find alternative solutions.