Fission

Firefox's status bar, the part of the browser that displays the progress of a loading Web page, is pretty inconspicuous; you may rarely even notice the little green bar at the bottom of Firefox's interface. Users of Safari are accustomed to a more obvious status bar; in that browser, the address bar and status bar are combined, making page load progress quite conspicuous. Fission is a Firefox add-on that lets users replicate the Safari-style status bar within Firefox.

Fission's operation is quite simple; when it's enabled, it fills the address bar with a user-selected color as a Web page loads. We liked that the add-on has several options for customization; not only can users select the color used in the status bar, they can choose to use an image instead. The application also allows users to simply move the green, Firefox-style status bar up to the right side of the address bar or show the connection status in the address bar. When you get right down to it, this is a pretty small and picky thing to customize, but who are we to tell you that you shouldn't have Firefox exactly the way you like it? If you prefer the Safari-style status bar, Fission is a very simple way to replicate that effect in Firefox.

Fission is free. Like most add-ons, it doesn't have a Help file, nor does it really need one. The application installs and uninstalls without issues. We recommend Fission to all users.