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)."

Comments

Linux 8.0?!?

[nokilli]

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!

Re:Linux 8.0?!?

[mark_hill97]

We all know that means Red Hat 8.0+. Quit complaining, not everyone knows that much about linux.

Re:Linux 8.0?!?

[cujo_1111]

Isn't he some foreigner? Probably a terrorist too...

Re:Linux 8.0?!?

[strabo]

We all know that means Red Hat 8.0+. Quit complaining, not everyone knows that much about linux.

Well, crap! I guess we have a long wait then, since the current version of Red Hat's operating system ... you know, "The corporate Linux standard" ... is only version 4.

</sarcasm>

Re:Linux 8.0?!?

[iabervon]

That's just the kernel. You have to add the version numbers for the kernel, glibc, gcc, and firefox to get the Linux version. I'm at 8.12.16.1, for example, which seems to be sufficient.

Re:Linux 8.0?!?

[BuhSnarf]

Whilst I agree that seems like a stupid mistake to make. Why not just put "Linux with Firefox 1.0.4" as that would surely have all the right software? But I think this shows one of the underlying problems of why it's hard to release anything to the Linux community. I use Linux (both Ubuntu and SuSE) which again have completely different version numbers ubuntu's 5.04 is much better than SuSE's v5 (if they had one!) So how are people supposed to release system requirements? Should they list each distro and it's version numbers, should they list each dependency and it's version number? Do many people actually know what version of glibc they have without looking? Or in fact which kernel? I don't. I think until people can release software that just works for Linux. i.e. you can get it from download.com or from the authors page and you just run an installer and it's all setup icons and all. Whilst I like repos the problem is is that you have to wait for people to build a package for your distro and upload it before you can install it. This can be weeks later than when the actual product was released and sometimes they contain bugfixes that we want now. For example Kopete's MSN connectivity problems. Before you say, well compile it and it'll be for your machine. I hate compiling, it's complicated and seems a awkard way of doing something. And many people are like that, especially my girlfriend who uses SuSE, she just wants to click in Yast and have the program ready.

That's great....

[SnoopJeDi]

...but really, I'm doing just fine setting Firefox's search box to use Google.

Re:That's great....

[eln]

Isn't it set to Google by default?

Honestly, what does the Google toolbar offer that Firefox doesn't already have, or that isn't already adequately covered by another extension?

Re:That's great....

[Chess_the_cat]

The highlighter. And it looks a ton better.

Re:That's great....

[Chowderbags]

There's a highlighter built into the find. Press control+f, type your word, and click the highlight.

Re:That's great....

[WARM3CH]

Honestly, what does the Google toolbar offer that Firefox doesn't already have, or that isn't already adequately covered by another extension?

Highlighting the search terms (no, it is not the same as / or control+F), Showing the page ranks, One click translation of the page, Backward links, Showing the google cache for the page. The other feature I really missed in Firefox was google bar's excellent AutoFill feature to fill the forms with a relatively very high accuracy and the option to fill specific fields only by typing a password (like credit card info...)

Re:That's great....

[MrFlannel]

Except that find button isn't linked with what I just searched for, which really is nice.
Often I find myself searcing for a technical spec, or whatnot, and I want to get to the part that I JUST saw in the little google preview blurb, since I know that's what I need. This just saves me from having to do anything but click the word on the tollbar.

Re:That's great....

[tod_miller]

Having read the ctrl-f comment below: You cannot ctrl-f highlight multiple words.

Having highlighting on a page from a search is nice, plus the PAGERANK is a useful tool in itself for web designers. I would be interested in this, although I loath to loose screen space.

How about have the Menu bar hideable?

I only ever use tools / extensions (page info being available on right click to get to media tab)

Re:That's great....

[Momoru]

Well that Googlebar probably doesn't track your web surfing habits like the Google brand one.

Yahoo's firefox toolbar

[DarkHelmet433]

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.
http://toolbar.yahoo.com/firefox?fr=firefoxtoolbar

Re:Yahoo's firefox toolbar

[killjoe]

Yahoo does not get much respect here on slashdot but I can't figure out why. They give you two gigs of free email, they have a very nice messenger. They let you create a very nice portal of your own choosing. They give you a calender and other productivity apps. They let you publish your resume on line. They let you make your own home page. They have the firefox toolbar (and ie). They have IP telephony (costs too much but it's integrated with messenger). The list goes on and on.

Google gets all the hype, yahoo gets no respect. I wonder why.

Re:Yahoo's firefox toolbar

[alienw]

The only reason they have 2GB of email is because of Google. All of their services are ad-infested and crappy. The search engine sucks. I can't think of a single reason one would use Yahoo other than inertia.

Re:Yahoo's firefox toolbar

[snorklewacker]

> Google gets all the hype, yahoo gets no respect. I wonder why.

They attach ads to all your outbound emails. This alone drives me away. I've taken to blocking all of yahoo's ads because they're so damn huge and intrusive, but since it bugs me ethically to frequently use their service with ads blocked, I just don't use their service.

Yahoo's search is fine now, but they were leading the charge in "pay for placement" not two years ago. There's some interesting options like "save" and "block" in searches, but they appear to be no-ops. Seems to provide no value over google, really.

Their toolbar is bundled with completely inappropriate things like acrobat, and shoveled onto my machine like so much spyware.

Huh?

[Cyno01]

"Pop-up blocking is an in-built feature of Firefox..."

Uh, yeah, so is google. Isnt the entire point of the google toolbar to add an in bar google search and popup blocking to IE, which both Firefox and Opera already have? Whats the point of this?

Re:Huh?

[malarkey]

The highlighting of the search terms in pages linked to by the results is not part of the "in-built" google search in Opera.

Re:Huh?

[bhtooefr]

There's also some page info stuff (possible to emulate with Bookmarklets, but not easy), the PageRank (only the One True Googlebar can do that), and text highlighting (a royal pain with bookmarklets, but the open source toolbar could do that. Besides, Firefox and Opera have inline search, making it unnecessary).

Re:Huh?

[The_Wilschon]

There exists a google pagerank extension for firefox.

Re:Huh?

[radish]

I have googlebar installed on firefox - the number one reason is the way it creates a button for each search term to let you jump straight to that word on the page. No other search tool I'm aware of does that as nicely (though I'm happy to be proven wrong).

Why leave out the Pop-Up blocker?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Not Entirely As Advertised

[NBarnes]

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.

Re:Not Entirely As Advertised

[XMyth]

Have you tried Flashblock? I haven't seen anything get around standard firefox popup blocking and flashblock. Most sites that get around firefox's popup blocking are using flash to open the window.

Re:Not Entirely As Advertised

[Saeger]

Yes, those damn DHTML overlay "popups" are becoming much more common, and they're not trivial to filter out either. Firefox & Privoxy can't block them (yet).

Re:Wait just a dog gone second

[truckaxle]

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.

Google Compute

[rayde]

I didn't RTFA but I wonder if this will enable me to participate in Google Compute...

Re:WHAT?!?

[Anonymous Crowhead]

Who the fuck says "in-built"?

Do I.

Why so late ?

[karvind]

I am not trying to be troll here, but why Google waited so long to provide the toolbar for a non-IE browser ?

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's not Firefox launching the popups.

[spiritraveller]

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.

Googlebar has several other merits.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

And this changes things how???

[Rooked_One]

I'm using firefox

I see the google search bar

I don't think anyone goes to google for anything besides searching....

My .000002 cents

Re:Wait a second:

[ehiris]

Ever since I stopped using IE because of the adware and spyware I can't completely get rid of, the one feature I miss from the Google toolbar is the in page form spell checker.

Re:Wait a second:

[shawn(at)fsu]

Why release Firefox, we already have IE? Seriously, why shouldn't they release it, it's all about choice.

Re:FirefoogleBar

[flatface]

Firebargle.

Re:FirefoogleBar

[njko]

Foobar?

the power of google...

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

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..."

Re:Wait a second:

[cujo_1111]

Tosspot...

Why release Linux when we already have Windows?

Why release MSN Messenger when we already have ICQ?

Why release an iRiver when we already have an iPod?

Why release a Mustang when we have a Corvette?

It is all about choice. The automotive world is not the only place where this is a good thing...

Re:Wait a second:

[SirSlud]

Its like .. different people have differing opinions here! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

Got an A for effort anyways

[Bootard]

While I think it's really cool that Google is giving a wink and a nod to alternative browsers, OSS, and the whole shebang, I have to wonder how useful this will be. I admit that it has been a long time since I had google toolbar for IE, but I only ever used it for two things: popup blocking and easy access to a google search. Firefox does those things already. So while I like their probable motivation, I don't know how useful the extra % or two of functionality is going to be.

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)

This is good news - Really

[nihilistcanada]

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.

Re:Wait a second:

[anti11es]

For an in form spell checker take a look at spellbound It works on mozilla/firefox. I use it all the time, it's awesome.

Yeah, I have this already

[zig973]

It's called 'google '

what's new

[LinuxRulz]

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! :)

Not redundant

[the_womble]

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.

About time we got the REST of the functionality.

[John Pfeiffer]

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.

Re:WHAT?!?

[BlackSabbath]

> Who the fuck says "in-built"?????????

Yoda.