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Google to Release Firefox Toolbar
daria42 writes "Google is about to release a Firefox version of its toolbar, according to an e-mail sent to developers of the open source GoogleBar project. The e-mail claims to have been sent by Google engineer Fritz Schneider and is dated 1 July. "It has pretty much the same features as the latest IE toolbar except of course for things like the popup blocker," the e-mail said (Pop-up blocking is an in-built feature of Firefox)."
I surprised they didn't name it "GooBar."
arent we all feeling lucky?
fuvoo: watch something
As per the email Google sent the GoogleBar guys.
I knew being a Gentoo user would subject me to some delays while waiting for everything to compile, but this is ridiculous! 8.0!?! I'm still running 2.6.10!
...but really, I'm doing just fine setting Firefox's search box to use Google.
In case anybody's interested, yahoo's firefox toolbar has been around for a while. It worked out of the box for me on Linux and FreeBSD machines, including a 64-bit build of firefox for FreeBSD/amd64.r
http://toolbar.yahoo.com/firefox?fr=firefoxtoolba
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Who the fuck says "in-built"?????????
Last straw, Slashdot. I'm outta here!
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
We do NOT need a Google toolbar. We have pop-up blocking and we have a definable Google search window built into Firefox. They should know better and not release the damned thing. Besides, when people open up Firefox for the first time, they go to "Firefox Start".
There's at least one well-known extension for FireFox that's along these lines, and it's reasonably popular (AdBlock).
Doesn't that indicate that a significant number of people would appreciate Google's crack it as well?
Pop-up blocking is an in-built feature of Firefox
If only that were still true.... Sadly, the advertisers appear to be way ahead of the Mozilla devs on this one.
google toolbar has other features like Google Maps, Google Mail checker, Google Video, Google Desktop searching, Google Suggest, and website thumbnails(preview images) on the Google search results.
I didn't RTFA but I wonder if this will enable me to participate in Google Compute...
Beyond the basic search capability, the popup blocker was the only useful thing about the toolbar (pre-SP2, and then that became unneeded as well). Since Firefox already has both features, I doubt many users will find this even worth the 2 second download or the miniscule screen space it takes.
Shouldn't google get a Redundant -1 mod for this toolbar since you have the Google multifuntion search bar in the corner of every Firefox window anyway?
I smell spyware...
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
How about other neat google goodies like Google Desktop Search and Picasa photo organizer ? Any guess if they would provide these utilities for *nix too.
It is plugins like Flash and Java that launch the popups now. If you disable Java and Flash, you will find that you no longer get popups.
You can use the Flashblock extension to run only the flash animations that you want to run.
Beyond the obvious search bar, Googlebar has a few other useful functions that the default Firefox one does not have, such as the ability to search within one site. Something I use a lot is the ability to quickly jump to and highlight the keywords you've just searched for by clicking them in the bar. It makes finding relevant info. on a long page much easier.
I see the google search bar
I don't think anyone goes to google for anything besides searching....
My .000002 cents
Google is trying to be a friend to the world of OSS. They're just trying to give you something for that browser you seem to feel is so superior.
"...if people respected copyright more, like you guys do with the GPL so religiously, [the DMCA] wouldn't be necessary."
I am using Safari which as some know does have a built in Google toolbar. Although minimally featured, it does the job. The code behind this bar can be summed up as: Do exactly what the URL field does but add "www.google.com/search/" to what the user typed. So why is this news? WHY??
unless I am mistaken (could be, I am on a PDA, so I don't have firefox to confirm), you need the toolbar to make search site easy. I use that feature all the time (plus up a level is useful on the googlebar in firefox)
* With so many cool extensions available do I need Google toolbar? * Will be available on Linux?
You can't see the pagerank of the page unless you use the google toolbar. As far as I know.
Bill Gates: "Damn Google for stealing the last rational argument to stay with IE! Steve, get me my litigation hat!"
Steve: *deep sigh* "I'm suing, I'm suing..."
How pointless is making a toolbar that repeats whats already available? Im not wasting my precious screenspace on a second google search...
Exactly, that is the one thing I have to have. I'm always searching for something that I can't find on the page and it's so nice to be able to just hit the highlight button and boom, there it is. Other than that I really have no use for a search field at all, I almost always just go to google.com for searches in safari for example (though I don't know why).
Highlighter.
I use the Google tool bar is for the word search buttons that are created when I enter a search string in. I find a high value in this by quickly locating the keyword I was searching for in the document with just a click of a mouse. I wish firefox would enable this as a feature in their status bar or some other unused area of the screen. Anyways, I look forward to the release.
I think instead of porting the IE stuff to FF, google should use the easy extensibility of FF as a way for easy experimentation and come up with some wild stuff that hasn't been seen yet. Firefox is all early adopters; I think google would have great success on all fronts testing out all their really forward thinking ideas on FF and then porting the stuff that works well to IE. As it is, they are being a little inefficient here.
(Cause providing the best search engine, the best free email, and google maps is nowhere near good enough, dammitl. Those lazy bastards aren't taking over the world quickly enough)
exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis
http://www.prgooglebar.org/
it has everything I need, I don't see why google would even bother when things like that exist.
prGooglebar is based on another one:
http://googlebar.mozdev.org/
Most of the more attractive functions (search box, pop up blocking, word find) are already included in Firefox, and there are extensions avaliable for everything else. Why get a toolbar that would take up 20 some pixel (height) of my screen space?
They get a bit of their software running on your system, and they control how that software interacts with their systems.
We might not need it, and I probably won't install it, but that's probably why they are doing it. That, and because every acknowledgement of OSS as a viable alternative to Microsoft is good for everyone except Microsoft.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I know some of you are going to run around with your hair on fire about the "man" using this toolbar to spy on us, etc... But really this is great news for FireFox. Firstly anyone who has used the IE Google Toolbar and tried the various FireFox extensions that mimic it know they are a good, but ulitmately a pale comparison to the original. The ease of use, and the fact that it simply works make the IE Google Toolbar a great, well, tool. I can't wait for the Firefox version. By Google releasing this it proves that FireFox is a big deal to the corporate world. Not IE big deal, but at least its a start. Plus with FireFox's ability to use extensions you have the best of both worlds, you can roll your own so to speak, or if you want a simple all in one, use the Google Firefox Toolbar. You have now one less reason to use IE and one more great one for using FireFox.
It's called 'google '
It's not like that at all.
there's more than one way to do me.
I don't see the interest to install this. Firefox has almost (if not) all the features of that google bar: :)
- Search and highlight within a page
- Easy google,ebay,etc. search (using mycroft and its extensions)
- Popup blocker (which works even better in combination with adblock)
- Auto filling form fields
- Browsing by names, instead of URLs
Really, what's left? oh yeah, screen space lost for a useless bar full of existent features and colored O. Well, maybe I'll install it for the colorfull logo, since it fits well with my current theme but that's all!
No doubt, it has more features then then the standard Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, etc google bar, but I find it fairly useless. All I see is features I don't need and browser clutter I don't want.
At the very least, this thing should access all of Google's weird searches. Movies, Maps, etc.
Also, it should be in Klingon.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
All those posts on the lines of "we have this already" are missing several points.
Firstly, this is about choice. You can have the official Google toolbar or the alternatives. Google have even said they will continue to link to Googlebar so users know they have the choice
Secondly, it is more likely to be used by non-geek users, simply becuase it comes from Google.
Thirdly, it is very good publicity for Firefox - it will be mentioned in Google press releases, and on pages about the Google Toolbar.
Fourthly, it will pressure others who have IE only extensions to produce Firefox versions - as Yahoo and Clusty already have.
Anyone notice that Firefox has been getting more popups lately?
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
How's the proposed bar any different from the PRGoogleBar?
http://www.prgooglebar.org/
Firefox/Mozilla extension with all the features of the IE GoogleBar. C'mon Google give us something really new for FFox...
google toolbar may be nice and dandy, but if i recall correctly, they didnt have any hotkey features (maybe they'll have it in the firefox version). but i've gotta say, you just can't beat ctrl+k.
if for every search, i had to take my right hand off the keyboard, move it to the mouse, click on the google toolbar, move my hand back to the keyboard, and enter my search phrase, then hit enter, i'd be so inefficient compared to how i am now.
someone mentioned searching highlighted words. that may be nice a nice feature, but i'd prefer type ahead find. just type the word i want, and keep on hitting ctrl+g. no need to use the mouse at all. it's not as pretty nor as simple to use as google's, but it gets the job done.
recently i changed my default search engine to A9. that was because i had recently made a purchase from amazon and my pi/2 discount disappeared. though 1.57% off isn't much, as a bargain hunter, it hurts me to not be able to save every penny i can, and it can take from 24hrs to 3 weeks after you start to use A9 again before the pi/2 discount returns. so as a precaution i switched over to A9 so it won't happen next time.
to my surprise, A9 results were very close to google's on the things i searched for and i actually got what i need from A9 just as i would have in google. so now A9 has officially become my default CTRL+K.
but i didn't get rid of google. it just takes 2 more key strokes. i made google a keyword and now all i have to do is:
CTRL+L
g keywords
ENTER
and google will work as if i did:
CTRL+K
keywords
ENTER
HD Trailers
This isn't a big deal at all. I just wasted 1.23 minutes of precious time! Let me know July 7th if there are any NEW features for Google Toolbar worth mentioning.
Meh. All of that and more can be done with Greasemonkey (scripts directory) (Internet Explorer implementation), without the added clutter of Yet Another Toolbar, and without the potential paranoia of a corporation behind it (referring to the crap storm when Google shipped Autolink in the IE toolbar). Greasemonkey is open source, developed by individuals, and each script is just javascript which you can easily inspect before choosing to install in case you're worried about a script "phoning home" to track your browsing. It's also better than bookmarklets because it runs the scripts automatically (you can tell it what urls to include or exclude, if you don't want a script running on every page).
Finally, once you've installed Greasemonkey or Turnabout (What? You don't already have them installed? For shame!), check out my sig for a script to remove Roland Piquepaille stories from Slashdot.
Considering the bar is Open Source, do you all think that malicious people can use this for bad and create adware bars based on this one?
I've been waiting for this for a while. While I appreciate the utility of Firefox's built-in dedicated searchbar (I have wikipedia, dictionary.com, google, and imdb on mine), I miss the 'open cached version' right-click options you get with the IE google bar.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
already done
I like the idea of the google toolbar, it brings some features that extend the functionality of the little google search-box that's default in firefox. On the other had, we got 83 search extentions for firefox at the moment. Will the google-bar just be another one in the list or will it actually bring something extra the others don't have..
/(bb|[^b]{2})/
You can already do this in Firefox my friend, just download the GCache extension and give it a whirl. Works like a charm.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
The features are nice, I really like everything about the A9 toolbar, except that these bars appear to really bog down the web browser. I get freezes and slow response when I'm flicking between tabs or working on https sites. And not just from A9. Pretty much every toolbar or plug-in that makes parallel requests slows the web browser down noticably.
Redundancy at it's finest.
Uh, I mean Yahoo, Yahoo did it. :P
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
except of course for things like the popup blocker," the e-mail said (Pop-up blocking is an in-built feature of Firefox)
Firefox does not catch all pop ups. I have the latest version, but there are sites that can display popups even in Firefox. The popups appear when Firefox gets the focus. That's on XP.
I use the awesome searchWP to fill this need.
After downloading it, you'll need to activate it by going to view->toolbars->customize and locating the terms-toolbar. Drag this onto the toolbar (I prefer the wide open space right next to the help button). You can also drag the Highlight icon onto the toolbar for more functionality.
Download the searchbox auto updater (updates the FF searchbox with terms you enter on the actual google site) and the search box extender (lets you expand the width of the FF searchbar) and you have a fully functional google toolbar with none of the mess. It's all very simple and blends quite well into the Firefox GUI.
Ask Jeeves has had this for a year or so...
Firefox alrerady comes with google search in the upper-right hand corner, blocks pop-ups, and generally keeps me safer without the need to waste up even more of my hard disk space with useless, RAM-consuming resource-hogging extraneous crap? What's the problem, Google? Just being made the default serch engine for Firefox's built-in search, not to mention being the search engine by default on the firefox startup page, isn't enough for you? You've gotta add even more crap to my browser?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
This is ignorant at best!
My suspicion is that this guy hasn't used an RPM distribution in ages, and that's if he runs Linux at all, which is a big if.
urpmi, yum, Smart, and Apt4RPM have made RPMs as easy as debs from the user standpoint.
not particularly important for casual surfer, though.
Does anyone know if it will be licensed with a free (as in freedom) license?
Try my extension, Googlebar Lite. I've improved on Googlebar's search word buttons by playing a sound (like the IE toolbar) when the search word is not found on the page. http://www.borngeek.com/firefox/googlebarlite/
Go, and never darken my towels again! -- Rufus
What bothers me about google tools like pop-up blocker and the famous google desktop are that people dont realize or dont talk about the legitimate pop-up windows it blocks.
I see people wondering why they cant access some secure website, bank account or do task because that pop-up blocker has just prevented the "click yes" button that was in the pop-up windows.
As for the google desktop search, i installed it and then tried to search files in this manner *.*exe and it didnt understand what i was searching for, i then reverted to windows own search engine and, to my surprise, Google search had overrun the utility and i couldn search my computer the way i wanted.
Maybe there was a setting in the google desktop search that i didnt setup but these are things that people should take in account before installing everything about google.
Dont get me wrong i use firefox and the google toolbar, but i have to revert to IE because it's not supported everywhere (mainly ms-win update).
I know i'm offtopic, but People should adress the good and the bad about google.
EarthLink launched a FireFox Toolbar "beta". It includes their Scamblocker anti-phishing tool. It's only Windows (says XP only but seems to work fine on my 2000 box).
You are wrong
God save Reverse Engineering
MOD THE CHILD UP!
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The google toolbar (for IE at least) has new features like "Look For Map" -- which creates a google map for any street address found on a webpage -- and a language dictionary which translates a word from English to another language if you hover your mouse over it.
Catch is, as I understand it, all of the pagerank extensions rely on methods that essentially violate Google's usage strictures. They're turning a blink eye for now, but widespread adoption could lead to it being shut down.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
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There are a lot of other additional features of the Googlebar which aren't supported by the default Firefox search (including mycroft) and some are also not going to all be incorporated into the official Google toolbar either.
It would just be nice if naysayers would do their research before just stating that everything should just already be built into Firefox. This is far from true. However, if all you want is to just simply search Google (or Images or whatever) then JUST use the built in Firefox search box, mycroft, or bookmarklets - that will suffice. However, there is MUCH more to the Googlebar than just those simple search features.
On another note, Google will have the ability to support things we cannot. Notice that Googlebar does NOT support proprietary or protected technologies (PageRank, Compute) though there are other extensions to the project which attempt to fill those gaps as well. They will also have better support since they have a dedicated team for this task whereas the Googlebar is a rag-tag group of volunteers who do what they can when they can, which goes in spurts.
Bottom line is that you should just find which tools work for your searching needs and just use those. There are pros/cons/niches that are addressed by basically any of of these solutions (Firefox search box alone, Googlebar, soon to be Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar, etc.) so just use the one that works best for you and don't try to convince everyone of what they don't need, espcially if you don't know what the potential options are that exist out there.
Are you bovilexic? Moo!
Everyone's bitching about redundancy, but I think it's great that Google is coming out with their own bar. The user interface on the open-source one is pretty lame.
For example: if you click in the search box slighly below the text, but still in the textbox area it drops down and you can't type anything. You have to hit escape to collapse the drop down before you can type your search term. This is not standard UI in windows. I click off by a few pixels and it delays my search--very annoying.
But doesn't the Googlebar work just fine?
Exactly. I like being able to highlight an address, hit a button, and have a Google Map of that address in a seperate tab. I also like being able to do Google Local search and Desktop search from the toolbar on my browser. Of course you can define all the searches and make them part of the Firefox search box, but you have to come up with your own nifty icons.
They give you two gigs of free email...
Actually, Yahoo only gives out one gig of free email. I'm looking at my (free) Yahoo mailbox, and I only have a gig. The two gigs is for people who upgrade to Yahoo Mail Plus.
The point that another poster makes about Yahoo leading the charge for fee email service is true. Before gmail arrived, Yahoo initially offered 6 megs for free accounts, then later cut the quota down to only 4 megs for newer accounts.
It's GNU/Linux, you insensitive clod!
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html
I may understand you but seeing that many users fire up IE and type in MSN search box the URL I wouldn't one more confusion than this.
gtkaml.org
I didn't believe the hype a while back but did my own tests to see for myself which was better. 99% of the time Google return not only more but more relevant results over Yahoo. Google does a better job of filtering out multiple page results from the same website/forum unlike yahoo.
All the random samples I tried yielded better results with Google. "Hackmaster Flash" G-19, Y-1, "Freezeone" G-100, Y-19, "faygle" G-842, Y-117, etc. Also, google doesn't have the annoying paid placement that yahoo does to trick noob users.
Along with a couple of other FF only extensions:x .html
http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/extensions/inde
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Interesting to see that Google has built-in a feature that sends traffic to competitors, and removes ads. Though No ads feature doesn't seem to be working for me.
Search Marketing Journal http://www.se
I was more interested in looking at another toolbar provided by customizegoogle.com. You may want to check it ou.
Search Marketing Journal http://www.se
in Beta here. They also clarified the "Linux 8" stuff, by putting Redhat in front of it...
Get it from http://toolbar.google.com. Autolink and spell check are there along with others. Useful tip is Alt+s takes you to the search box in the bar.
See http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/07/211 7201&tid=217&tid=154&tid=218/ [slashdot].
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