SrichNET

I’ve been using the iGoogle home page for quite some time now, and it is an exceptional online tool – Infinitely modifiable to ones wants and needs. I have mine setup nicely so I can jump on and instantly see whats going on in all the areas that interest me. It is effectively a ‘Next-Gen’ newspaper, and one I cannot easily live without these days.

But some time ago Google forcefully rolled out a new version with the Canvas View feature, which adds a tab bar down the left hand side and makes a lot of the gadgets capable of maximizing to the width of the page without having to actually load a new page. It is very cool in some respects and I’m sure many people simply love its usefulness. I am not one of those people.

I only have a few gadgets installed on my page so the whole concept of tabs is not at all useful for me, and I rarely if ever want to maximize any of those gadgets. Therefore iGoogle wastes a lot of screen real-estate. Above and beyond that, there is just other small bloat creep that one does not need nor want to see:

Its all really not a big issue in the scheme of things, but every time I’ve looked at my homepage for the past few months it has irked me. And for whatever reason this morning I just couldn’t stand it any longer and decided to rectify the issue. I spent some time Googling about, uhm, iGoogle, and I found very little other than various forum threads dedicated to the same problem I have.

But luckily I have a brain, and even more luckily I used it quite well for how early it was in the morning! So here is how I managed to remove the bloat:

What you will need:

• Firefox – This only works in Firefox, so make the move if you haven’t already.
• Adblock Plus Plug-in – The Firefox plug-in that does all the work.
• (Optional) Firebug Plug-in – A Firefox plug-in that greatly assists in finding the code elements you want to remove.

The Concept:

The concept is simple. Adblock Plus is a must-have Firefox plug-in that automatically blocks 99.9% of ads that appear on websites. Most of the time it can stop them from even downloading in the first place, which increases page load time. The reason we’re going to use it here is because a. Every Firefox user should have this plug-in installed regardless, and b. It is a quick and simple method that can be easily modified, added to, or reversed at any time.

The Firebug plug-in helped me quickly find the elements I wanted to remove. It is not necessary for the HowTo, but if you want to add your own customizations then use this app.

Step 1.
Install and setup Firefox and Adblock Plus.

Step 2.
Select and copy the following filter code:

google.com#*(personalize_link)
google.com#*(footerwrap)
google.com#*(leftborder)
google.com#*(btnG)
google.com#*(new_user_demo)
google.com#*(btnI)

Step 3.
Open up the Adblock Plus Preferences by going to Tools > Adblock Plus Preferences.

Step 4.
Paste the filter code into the filter list by right-clicking anywhere in the filter list and hitting Paste.

Done! Your iGoogle page should now be Bloat Free(tm), like so: