Personal Menu

CNET Editors' review

by: Seth Rosenblatt on April 15, 2009

This Firefox extension compacts the menubar behind a single icon, but it comes with so many options and customizations that it's a thorough and arguably essential one-trick wonder. Personal Menu frees up screen real estate in much the same way that Google Chrome and Internet Explorer have banished their menus to drop-down status, but because you can alter nearly every aspect of its look and behavior, it's an exceptionally useful add-on.

You can configure which menus appear behind the button, and in which order they're listed. These choices aren't limited to the standard File, Bookmarks, or Tools--any sub-menu from the main menus can be pulled out and added to the drop-down. For example, if you need to access the Extensions Options menu often, you might want to put that in the drop-down to save time by having to navigate to it through the Tools menu. You can also save menu drop-down configurations, a useful feature for computers running multiple Firefox profiles.

Mouse buttons can be configured to alter menu behavior, too. From the Miscellaneous tab in the Personal Menu extension options, users can adjust actions when middle-clicking or right-clicking on the Bookmarks or History buttons, as well as alter the number of pages that appear in the History. Advanced options include adjusting in which direction the menu opens, forcing the menubar to appear via a hot key, and "emergency response measures" to bring up the menubar if the toolbar icon accidentally gets disabled.

On rare occasion the extension has grayed-out its menus, fixed by restarting Firefox, and some of the descriptions for the advanced features could be written more clearly. Still, Firefox fans looking to make the most of their screens or make menus more useful will find this to be a must-have add-on.