Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

Great news for you Firefox minimalists: have you always wanted Minimalist Gmail in one click? There’s an extension for that.

After my post on creating a Minimalist Gmail experience using Greasemonkey scripts, programmer and artist Matt Constantine worked hard to create an amazing Firefox extension that did what I was looking for and a lot more: The Minimalist Gmail Firefox Extension.

You can install this extension and not worry about installing Greasemonkey or any of the many user scripts I detailed in my previous post.

This simple extension creates a barely-noticeable label in the top right corner that you click on to give you options to hide:

The entire Gmail header, including all the links across the top, the Gmail logo, the search box, and other clutter at the top.

The footer, which is a bunch of small links across the bottom of Gmail.

All the ads that show up to the right of your email message — hiding ads gives wider screen space to your messages.

Non-essential things in your sidebar, including the chat box and invite box. If you have other gadgets in your sidebar enabled, you can disable them in Gmail’s settings.

Almost everything in the Inbox view, including the lines separating messages, buttons along the bottom, most buttons and links across the top.

You decide which elements to hide, but if you check all the options, the result is a very satisfying uncluttered Gmail. The best email program just got beautiful.

For those who normally use the buttons, Matt and I both recommend enabling the keyboard shortcuts and learning them. You can do all the things you do with the buttons, but faster, and it only takes a few minutes to learn them.

If you’re interested in reading more on how I use Gmail, the minimalist way, check out the steps I use at the bottom of my previous post.

I’d like to give a big “thank you” to Matt for creating this extension. Check out his site or follow him on Twitter.

If you liked this post, please bookmark it on Delicious. Thanks my friends.

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