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Yahoo Releases Firefox Toolbar Beta
eWarz writes "Following Google's footsteps, Yahoo has released a beta version of it's toolbar for Firefox. The new toolbar is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux."
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...and all this time I thought the toolbar was a virus or spamware.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
Does this mean they have figured out how to port spyware to linux/MAC?
I don't think there's a big market for toolbars that just repeat stories from a week ago.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
I read the headline to this article and I just couldn't figure out what a Firefox toolbar was, let alone why Yahoo would release one.
Perhaps a better headline would be "Yahoo toolbar beta for Firefox"
What they should do is release a toolbar for Mozilla Suite as well and not only Firefox.
:)
And Google needs to release the toolbar for Linux.
Though, even if they did that, I'd still continue using Opera
Yahoo Releases Firefox Toolbar Beta and quickly finds out that no one uses because of the already implemented search toolbar in FF. Thank you, I have enough sites reading where I'm going, without Yahoo! doing it for every site. Yes, I realize that Y! probably doesn't do that, but the features on the Y! toolbar don't appeal to me at all. I don't need Y! mail, because I use gmail, and I use Google instead of Yahoo because I hate the sponsored results. And somebody please reply and tell me whether or not they're actually putting the popup blocker in...
The only way to tell the difference between a hamster and a gerbil is that the hamster has more white meat.
It's = It is Its = belonging to it
I mean, currently in Firefox, I have the FF Bookmark toolbar, the BioBar (a FF add-on for biomedical research; PDB, etc), and the google toolbar. Now they want me to add the Yahoo! toolbar?!?! Please!
Now, a Slashdot Toolbar could be pretty cool, on the other hand,... ;-)
Q: How many users prefer Beta Yahoo Toolbar for Firefox over Google Toolbar for Firefox?
A: Both.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Wanted to try this out, but install fails with my nightly Deer Park build. A few other great extensions have too, so maybe it's time for me to switch back to 1.0x...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
You know, I think Spybot S&D might remove that...
The only way to tell the difference between a hamster and a gerbil is that the hamster has more white meat.
The only Yahoo! specific thing it does is the My Yahoo system of adding pages to a central server so you can take "favourites" with you between computers. The Yahoo search is an easy addition to the site searcher (defaults to Google, easy to switch), and the rest of it is just duplicating the bookmarks system. I'll ignore the "anti-spyware" stuff because that's Windows specific.
At least Google's toolbar does stuff like reporting PageRanks. This one seems to be bloat for the sake of getting a Yahoo logo onto your desktop.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Come on Microsoft, how about an MSN toolbar for Firefox? ;)
Every single time the Yahoo Toolbar gets installed on one of my PC's at home I have nothing but trouble with the resources afterwards. The last time it snuck onto one of my computers at home was with the Macromedia Shockwave install. I've banned it's use and installation in my house. Anyone else have the same experience with this particular toolbar?
so we shall make fluffy user-tracking products instead
http://toolbar.yahoo.com/firefox
http://toolbar.google.com/firefox
Yahoo! Toolbar --> Beta ---
Google Toolbar BETA
coincidence?
Why are the download buttons both on the right of the screen (I know it can be anywhere, but not many sites before google seemed to put buttons on the right hand side like that).
Before you link to 100 different sites with the download button on the right, how come the hotmail login has moved to the right hand side of the screen only since gmail did it.
It seems they are hinting at a google layout (not that this is a bad thing, nor that google owns two column web page layouts), it just seems a bit strange?
... competition working at its best :-) How long has Yahoo been dragging its feet about this? Low and behold - a week after Google Yahoo releases its own. Did they think Firefox wasn't important before that? Who knows - but it's clear that Yahoo is losing the race, especially when it comes to being an innovative company that continuously wins the hearts and minds of geeks like us :-)
Following Google's footsteps, Yahoo has released a Search Engine"
\n.\n
I've had nothing but trouble with this particular toolbar in the past. Every machine at my house that it's been installed on seems to all of a sudden have resource issues. These are not slow machines either. The slowest is an AMD 1.5 GHZ with 1 GIG Ram. I remove it and the machine is right back up to *snuff* as it were. The last time it made it onto one of my machines was inside the Macromedia Shockwave install. I've since banned it's use in my home. Has anyone else had this type of problem with this toolbar?
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
Seriously guys, this yahoo bashing google loving is pathetic..
..
This was released Feb 2005
http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000077.html
Googles was released this month ( I think, double check that )
And yes, i do work for Yahoo, but these are not the opinions of my employer.
Fatal error encountered, aborting reading!
Line 2: fatal basic grammar error (illegal possessive apostrophe).
Yahoo has released a beta version of it's toolbar for Firefox. The new toolbar is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
A solution is available for your error: go back to school.
For future reference, see this document.
The unofficial
And those of us using safari, still don't care. A yahoo toolbar will be a great idea when Yahoo becomes a worthwhile place to visit for something other than yahoogroups, internet poker, and webcam girls.
Longer than a few weeks, since before June I do believe.
I am not in anyway affiliated with Max Cannon
Unfortunately, as much as I like Yahoo's other real estate (mail, calendar, etc.), I gotta say that I won't be installing it. Their search, from what I can tell, is now primarily for paid listings only. We've had our company's web site up for 3 years, with Google spidering it completely every day and it has a Google Page Rank of "5". Yahoo only just in the past week added our front page. Of course, that's tiny anecdotal evidence, but to me, that says a lot about the quality of Yahoo's search.
"Protect yourself from spyware with Anti-Spy for Windows"
First it's the anti-virus industry totally ignoring Mac and Unix users. Now Google and Yahoo leave Mac and Unix users to swing in the wind. Does anyone have anti-spyware for something other than Windows?
I don't want to have to switch to Windows just to get this support.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Adobe Acrobat tries to install the damn thing too, use foxit instead of Acroreader.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
The Yahoo toolbar provides access to Yahoo! bookmarks, through which I can have the same set of bookmarks on all three of my daily use computers without having to email them to myself. If any of you know how to do that some other way, i would be interested.
I was trying to be funny.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Googles success has came from innovation, simply copying everything Google does from revamping their search to be exactly the same to this doesnt have the same impact.
i hear this and i just wonder why is yahoo releasing this toolbar for mac and linux when the rest of the site pretty much requires IE?? iirc you can't even play any games from linux(i dunno about mac) and everytime i try to play games from firefox my firefox crashes!!! i personally will not use this plugin(and anything else from yahoo) til they support other browsers and platforms....btw i wonder if google would add a games section
The purpose of using Free Software is to be FREE from corporations/individuals that wants to tell you what you can do with your computer and what you can't, and still, many companys keep releasing proprietary software for Free plataforms, If i wanted Proprietary software, i woudln't be using GNU/Linux. In certain cases where they release some software for which there is no real Free Software alternative, i can see they know they will have a marketshare (It's still ethically wrong, but i understand it), but when they release such a trivial piece of proprietary software like a toolbar, to run on very big developments that are completely free, and where there are alternatives to that specific software (There are thousands of Free toolbars for Firefox), i don't see how someone would install it.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
del.icio.us
If you want one bad enough, why don't you write one. That's what the googlebar people did before Google finally released a version for firefox.
What is the news here? Yahoo did it because Google did it. And then also most of big players will - it is like race in features - we got that, they also etc. etc.
But actuall I find some smaller sites to be promoting FF. Like biggest polish dictionary providers (encyclopedia, dictionaries etc. etc. former communist monopoly) have provided search plugin for FF... That is interesting. It is like they really find FF more convinient themselves so they suggest it for use with their services - not "me too" stuff.
how is this news? http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/11/002920 4&tid=154&tid=95&tid=1
Very unlikely. I work in the industry.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Not only is this a dupe that of a story from like four months ago, but the story submitter appears to have not noticed the dates and therefore confused who is in who's footsteps.
sigs are a waste of space
Ok, smartypants, here's what I said:
If anything is clear, it's that I was referring to one instance of the industry allegedly "ignoring" non-Windows users, and that this was a second alleged instance - a different kind of thing.
I didn't explicitly say "spyware and viruses are different", because to the extent it even matters it's understood. It hardly matters, because A) the removal tools are beginning to encompass all categories and B) the lines are blurring as the evil techniques are shared.
Now, go away.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
" Very unlikely. I work in the industry."
Lol, oh, I guess I was wrong. If you work in the industry, then there could not possibly be an issue. No personal disrespect meant, really. But that is not much in the way of proof.
That is what every one of them say. It isn't me!
Who just read the Technical Writing book?
The weathers here - Wish you were beautiful
Same here. Isn't this story a dupe? Anyhow, the best thing about the toolbar is direct link into yahoo's MyWeb. Web based an managed bookmarks with an RSS feed. I absolutely love it.
Y?
?/o
The reason it seems more intuitive is that your eye naturally starts at the top left hand corner of the page and sweeps down and to the right. You finish your "journey" as it were at the bottom right hand side of the page. If you notice, most professional websites if not all have their logo and the most pertinent info in the upper left hand side. Then all of the copyright, contact us links, and buttons on forms etc tend to be in the lower right quadrant. If you go to a few different pages for instance www.intel.com, www.novell.com, www.cnn.com, slashdot.org... etc you'll see that. While browsing around the web notice where your eye wants to move comfortably to as the page loads. Or better yet, go to Google and type in some search words and click "I'm feeling Lucky". Then close your eyes as the page loads, give it ample time to load, and then open your eyes. See how many times your eyes will drift to the top right portion of the page first.
One of two things may have happened.
1) Yahoo doesn't understand the "comfort" or "intuitive" nature of humans with upper right corner of webpages, or
2) They have a left handed web designer.
You decide.
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
And also following Google's footsteps, Yahoo started Yahoo Mail, as well as Yahoo Maps, and Yahoo News.
Seriously, they have a lot more stuff which has been released before Google, and more updates can be found at their official blog http://www.ysearchblog.com/ which is much better than Google's official blog.
I'm not trying to troll, and I'm glad to see that corporations are acknowledging Firefox in this way -- I've just never understood why anyone would want to use these toolbars. Does someone use this, and can he or she clarify, in that case?
Let me extrapolate then. I am a developer for an ad detwork that does deal with Active X campaigns (along with totally regular banners from blue chip companies,) and knowing the sensitive political and economic nature of installing background applications that spawn unwanted popups, Yahoo has very little to gain from promoting spyware.
The economics don't pan out; whatever money Yahoo could make from installing something that delivered said popups simply does not compare to what they make from the CPMs they would get from the banners they run on their website alone. Its a simple matter of economics; they don't need to do what the grandparent poster suggests if you go by the current CPM rates the industry bares, nevermind the publicity risk they would assume if they were actually installing flat out spyware with their toolbar.
Maybe they collect browsing habits from the browser that you have the toolbar installed on, I don't know, but they certainly don't deliver ads outside of the normal request chain you'd see if you sniffed your HTTP headers when loading a page from the web.
Thus far, adaware and spybot seem to rid most machines of most infections, and I've never seen anything suggesting that Yahoo software is responsible for this kind of activity.
Another point; if Yahoo delivers spyware that munges your computer up, you probably wouldn't be able to visit their site and view the banners they do place there, thus denying them from the much better rates that their legit banners command over the kind of rates that spyware popups are run at.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I tried it on several systems long ago (it's been out for many months as others have noted), and again recently (a few weeks ago after the 2nd or 3rd slashdot announcement) hoping that it was a newer version - nope.
Anyways, the reason I ask is, it works fine on the windows machine I'm forced to use at work, but it complains that it can't load images and does absolutely nothing under the several Linux systems I've tried it on (various releases of Fedora).
The _only_ thing I want it for is the portable bookmarks.
Has anyone seen this actually work in Linux?
Has anyone seen a fix for this bug?
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
The Yahoo Toolbar was posted quite awhile ago. How else would you explain the Yahoo Toolbar's 7 PageRank while Google's Toolbar is only 0? I mean, like, duh.
I installed it, tried it for a few days, decided I did not use it and disabled it a good while ago. Now Slashdot gets round to telling me its available. How would I keep up with whats happenning without /.'s timely news aggregation.
I'm using the Yahoo Toolbar on both my Windows and Mac boxes so I can share bookmarks. It's also nice to share my bookmarks live between Firefox and IE.
But Yahoo Toolbar won't install on Deer Park 2 (aka Firefox 1.1 alpha 2). It complains that "0.5b" is not a valid version number.
Can I hack the version string somehow to allow it to install? Change it to "0.5.0" or something?
James
Have you considered using del.icio.us for your bookmark needs? I keep my bookmarks on there, with a keyword of (among several other things) "bookmark". Then by using the RSS link and Firefox's Live Bookmark functionality, my bookmarks are always the same across all my machines.
Actually, that's kinda oversimplifying my setup. I actually have several categories which I put stuff into, like News, General Bookmarks, Forums, etc. Each one gets a different keyword, and the RSS feed can be based on that keyword, so I have several Live Bookmarks as drop downs. I also have a "Post to del.icio.us" javascript bookmarklet for quickly bookmarking a new page.
Works great, I highly suggest it.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
they didn't copy the one layout that matters, line breaks in the search blobs_ en%7Clang_ru&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=shorter+justifica tion&btnG=Search&lr=lang_en%7Clang_ru
- web-t&p=longer+justification
http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=lang
The fact that the google result blobs are squished means that I can scan across them, and do so carefully that I don't veer off into the result above or below:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab
That may sound silly, but this is of utmost importance.
-ashot
"Yahoo has very little to gain from promoting spyware."
I apologize if I suggested or insinuated that Yahoo was promoting spyware or malware. I too, do not believe that is the case. I do however believe that their content delivery engine, as found in their current toolbar, is lacking in enough robustness to stop others from taking advantage of it, or simply hijacking it. It is my impression, (I remind you that I did state I do not have facts to back it up, just a heck of a lot of coincidence), the Yahoo toolbar is being utilized by less honorable people (perhaps via hijacking it) to deliver thier malicious software. Yahoo may very well just be the goat that allows the disease to be carried. There are just too many people, including myself, who have had these experiences to dismiss them as coincidental.
Does this mean other features such as LAUNCHcast will be ported over as well?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
After installing The 0.5b Beta toolbar in Firefox 1.0.6, I noticed that when I tried to customize the toolbar's built in to Firefox that I could not click and drag items that were already in the toolbars. I could add items to the toolbar, but not move or remove them. Basically the toolbars never switch into customize mode; they stay in normal mode (where they can't be modified).
Disabling or removing the Yahoo toolbar fixed the problem.
I guess that's why they call it a beta.
But will Google Toolbar work on Linux? No
To quote http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/index.html
" System requirements: Windows XP/2000 SP3+, Mac OS X 10.2+, or Red Hat Linux 8.0+"
I can't be arsed looking up the rest of your claims.
As one of the more minor members of the community-created Yahoo! Companion for Mozilla, I'd like to point out that there is another option if you distrust/dislike the official version.
Peter Buergner, Dave Viner, Brian Kennelly and a host of others have created an excellent alternative for folks who like the functionality of the Yahoo! Toolbar but prefer Firefox/Mozilla. The current version (0.54) is a bit out of date - a new version should be hitting the servers soon. It is much further along than the official version, with full internationalization support (including Chinese), disposable address support for Yahoo! Mail, the ability to remove the Search Box (a function the official version has apparently removed from both the IE and FF versions) and a few others.
I've looked at the official source code and it's nicely written - probably a bit cleaner than ours, truth be told. We've had quite a bit of discussion on the mailing list about adding features not found on any of the official toolbars (including dynamically folding the Yahoo! bookmarks into the Mozilla/FF bookmarks, the ability to redirect menu selections into new tabs, and a bunch of other stuff). Recent "nightly" builds (more like weeklies, but hey...) have included about:config support for some optional functionality.
Most of us on the Companion team are happy to see official support for Firefox by Yahoo!. It shows that FF is really gaining traction, and will help a lot of Yahoo! users to migrate to the FF platform. Hopefully, most the of the newbs will use the official version (saving us some headaches on the mailing list), and when people want to step up to a more feature-rich version, they can upgrade to our version. One thing the team has been very concerned about is making sure that our version works on all Mozilla platforms, and in both Firefox and Mozilla Suite. Early word is that the official version works best on Firefox on WinXP - there seem to be minor problems using it with the Mozilla Suite, alternate themes and non-XP platforms (the code is all generic Javascript, so I expect those issues to be easily fixable). Our 0.54 build has some issues in Linux due to an improper set of permissions added to a directory it creates to store the Yahoo! feed. This has been fixed in the nightlies, or you can fix it by modifying the permissions of the yahootoolbar_saves directory in your Firefox profile (chmod 666 should do it).
Of course, our version could end up dying in the shade of the official version, but that's competition for you!
p.s. I know a lot of /.ers prefer the Google toolbar, but lots of us have already invested a lot of time in the Yahoo! version and don't feel like switching. Besides, Yahoo! as a portal (currently) has a lot of things Google just doesn't provide - I track my portfolio there, have a My Yahoo! portal page with a lot of localized content, like the quick links to my local sports teams, etc. And, at this point, you've at least got to give Yahoo! credit for being the first to officially support the FF platform (though I have a feeling Google is going to come on very strong, given the recent hiring of Ben Goodger.)