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Most netbooks have 1024 x 600 pixel or lower resolution displays. And while a few years ago, it wasn’t hard to find full sized computers with 800 x 600 pixel monitors, these days most applications and web sites are designed for larger screens. One thing that you can do to improve the experience of using a netbook is to optimize your web browser for the small screen by removing unecessary toolbars, changing icon sizes, and performing other actions to make sure that you have as much room as possible to display actual web pages.

One of the easiest ways to do that is by installing the Meerkat Firefox extension. This utility hides the Firefox status bar when there’s no activity, removes the menu bar and places those items in a drop down menu, resizes icons, and adds downloads and bookmarks buttons to the navigation area so you have easy access to these features without letting them take up valuable space in a dedicated toolbar.

The developer says Meerkat can add about 60 pixels of vertical screen space for web browsing. That’s about 10% of a netbook screen. Of course, you could also install another web browser like Google Chrome, which takes up less screen real estate than Firefox, even without any plugins. But if you’re tied to Firefox Meerkat might be worth checking out. The developer recommends returning your toolbars to the default layout before installing the plugin.

via Notebooks.com