Do you use Mozilla Firefox? Try my Wide GitHub extension
I use GitHub almost every day and I find it frustrating that a platform used by millions of developers around the world still hasn’t adopted a wide layout.
Since I mostly visit the site on a 27” screen, this shortcoming is even more obvious to me.
While Google Chrome has several extensions to optimize GitHub’s layout and make it wide and/or responsive, ever since Mozilla updated Firefox to version 57 (Quantum) in November 2017, the only extension that did this job stopped working.
So I developed and released an extension for Mozilla Firefox called “Wide GitHub” that — once installed — makes GitHub’s layout wide, giving an optimal view of the site to those using large monitors too. It’s a WebExtension, so it follows Mozilla’s latest standards for Firefox extension development.
Or visit the project’s repo, but install Wide GitHub first 😄
GitHub is finally wide!
Frequently asked questions
Why did GitHub need an extension to make it wider?
Because the layout had a fixed maximum width, designed for screens much smaller than the ones we use today. On a 27-inch monitor the result was two huge empty bands on the sides and the code squeezed in the middle: a problem you really notice if you read diffs all day.
Is it compatible with recent versions of Firefox?
It's a WebExtension, which is the current standard for Firefox extensions. I wrote it precisely because the move to Firefox 57 Quantum, in November 2017, had retired the old extensions — and with them the only one that did this job.
Is there a Chrome version too?
No, I only published it for Firefox: Chrome already had several equivalent extensions, while Firefox had nothing left. The code is public on GitHub, so anyone who wants to port it elsewhere can start from there.