How to display the Links toolbar as icons only in IE 8

Posted on May 23, 2009 at 5:21 am

I’ve been using Internet Explorer 8 recently and I have to say it’s definitely better than all of the older versions of IE. It’s faster and it’s got some nice features like favorite websites when you open a new tab, private browsing, and more.

The Favorites toolbar (aka Links toolbar) in IE 8 is just like the toolbar in previous versions of IE. You can drag a website to the toolbar and have 1-click access to that website.

What I realized recently, however, is that all of the icons on my links bar usually have favicons from the website. This makes it really easy to figure out which website each icon represents.

The fact is, all those text labels are just eating up space and causing me to only be able to add 5 or 6 links to my Links toolbar. Annoying! So why not just get rid of them and display only icons. You can make your toolbar look clean and simple, like this:

Can you tell which sites those are by the icons? Easily! Here’s how to display only icons on the Favorites toolbar in IE 8:

Step 1: Open IE and right-click on any of the icons in the Links toolbar to pull up the context menu. Make sure you click on one of the links, not the toolbar itself.

Step 2: Now expand Customize Title Widths and choose Icons Only. You can also choose Short Titles if you want to retain the text labels, but make them smaller.

That’s it! Now you can add way more links to your Links toolbar and be more productive! Make sure to add Online Tech Tips! Enjoy!

» Filed Under Internet Explorer Tips

Comments

2 Responses to “How to display the Links toolbar as icons only in IE 8”

Dave said on : June 3rd, 2009 at 8:05 pm

IE8 Favorites Bar is NOT like the IE7 Links Bar. It cannot be dragged up to the Menu Bar. Don’t tell me to uncheck the Lock the toolbars, it is already unlocked. Microsoft has decided they know more about what I want and need than I do. There are only 4 or 5 items on the Menu Bar, and I only had a few URLs on my Links Bar, so pretty much two blank lines taking up valuable web page space. So in IE7 I just dragged the Links Bar up to the same line as the Menu Bar, and whalla, I have more viewable web page space. IE8…YUCK! I uninstalled it.

Fred said on : July 21st, 2009 at 2:02 pm

I’m with Dave (3Jun09) on this. Microsoft’s ‘wisdom’ is not infinite. I pity those with netbooks where space is already at a premium. Rather than let MSFT waste __my__ pixels, I too am reverting to IE7 until & unless MSFT comes to its senses. Jeez, if you allowed it in IE7 how hard can it be to continue that flexibility in IE8?