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Google to Release Firefox Toolbar

Posted by samzenpus on from the new-toolbar dept.

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)."

29 of 348 comments (clear)

  1. Linux 8.0?!? by nokilli · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!

    1. Re:Linux 8.0?!? by mark_hill97 · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    2. Re:Linux 8.0?!? by iabervon · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

  2. That's great.... by SnoopJeDi · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    1. Re:That's great.... by Chess_the_cat · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The highlighter. And it looks a ton better.

      --
      Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
    2. Re:That's great.... by Chowderbags · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    3. Re:That's great.... by WARM3CH · · Score: 5, Informative
      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...)
  3. Yahoo's firefox toolbar by DarkHelmet433 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

    1. Re:Yahoo's firefox toolbar by killjoe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      evil is as evil does
  4. Huh? by Cyno01 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "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?
    --
    "Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
    1. Re:Huh? by malarkey · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    2. Re:Huh? by bhtooefr · · Score: 4, Informative

      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).

    3. Re:Huh? by The_Wilschon · · Score: 5, Informative

      There exists a google pagerank extension for firefox.

      --
      SIGSEGV caught, terminating

      wait... not that kind of sig.
    4. Re:Huh? by radish · · Score: 4, Informative

      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).

      --

      ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

  5. Not Entirely As Advertised by NBarnes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:Wait just a dog gone second by truckaxle · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  7. Google Compute by rayde · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

  8. Re:WHAT?!? by Anonymous+Crowhead · · Score: 5, Funny

    Who the fuck says "in-built"?

    Do I.

  9. Why so late ? by karvind · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.

  10. It's not Firefox launching the popups. by spiritraveller · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  11. Googlebar has several other merits. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  12. Re:Wait a second: by shawn(at)fsu · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    --
    500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
  13. Re:FirefoogleBar by njko · · Score: 4, Funny

    Foobar?

    --
    \n.\n
  14. the power of google... by Lord_of_the_nerf · · Score: 5, Funny

    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..."

  15. Re:Wait a second: by SirSlud · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"
  16. This is good news - Really by nihilistcanada · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  17. Not redundant by the_womble · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  18. About time we got the REST of the functionality. by John+Pfeiffer · · Score: 4, Informative

    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*
  19. Re:WHAT?!? by BlackSabbath · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    Yoda.