Google Firefox Toolbar Out Of Beta

wellington map writes "Google has released Firefox search toolbar (Version 1.0.20050923) after two months in beta. One interesting addition is Google Suggest, which guesses what you're typing and offers useful suggestions in real time."

Comments

Worth noting..

[footissimo]

..that google suggest is available as a seperate extension (and is quite useful)

Not for Deer Park

[broothal]

Please note, that the toolbar is incompatible with Firefox 1.5 (Deer park).

"I already have googlesearch in Firefox"

[Sweetshark]

Well, yes guys, there is a searchtool in Firefox. However, the googletoolbar ist more a google-Setup-GUI. Its even usefull when its hidden.

• Contextmenu with "search for selected text", backward links, similar pages, and translation
• google suggest in der searchbar
• setup for hightlight colors etc.
• etc.

Its really pretty usefull.

Re:"I already have googlesearch in Firefox"

[Anonymous Coward]

Contextmenu with "search for selected text"

This has been a standard part of the firefox context-menu for years... (as has the google search box, and the keyword search)

Re:Wait..

[gid13]

Yes, but it has limited functionality by comparison.

The new Google toolbar is neat, but it can't compete with the open source Googlebar (which Google, to their credit, offers a link to on the Google toolbar download page). Many more features like the use of Google Maps, and so forth.

The difference is so great that my browsing is significantly less efficient when browsing at someone else's computer, even if they're using Firefox.

Re:The browser should be functional

[BladeMelbourne]

"When I develop, I almost always use IE because I know there will be less downtime from crashes and cache-related bugs."

I prefer to develop using the Mozilla Suite (aka Seamonkey) or FireFox. I very rarely have more than one browser window open - I just Ctrl Tab though the tabs. This is not slow at all.

I have the Tidy plugin at the bottom right of the browser informing me of W3C code validity. MSIE can't do this. In my experience, Mozilla crashes no more than MSIE (about once every 2 weeks for me).

If you want to force Mozilla based browsers to download files every time, type about:config into the address bar. Then find browser.cache.check_doc_frequency and set it to 1 (it defaults to 3)

As a developer, in my dev environments I ensure that every page is set to expire immediately in the request header. (I have never had cache-related bugs from either MSIE or Mozilla.)

I have never had downtime due to "crashes and cache-related bugs". Maybe I'm just lucky?

Google suggest isn't new

[NineNine]

I've been using the toolbar, along with Google Suggest in Firefox for several months. It ain't new. Marginally useful, but it certainly isn't "new".

Re:Does it block popups?

[Joey Patterson]

Actually, Firefox already blocks popups, so Google's Toolbar doesn't need to block them, unless you're looking for a popup blocker blocker.

IE is preloaded in memory, mozilla seamonkey too

[free2]

if you like the fact that IE is preloaded in memory, you should try mozilla seamonkey (the full suite) that offers this option too

I know what you mean

[DrSkwid]

one of my extensions used to check for update every time a new window was installed, thinkg was the update web site has disappeared so it was waiting to time out. I managed to stop this behaviour using /etc/hosts. Perhaps your extensions are doing simlar things. Time to tcpdump!

Re:Shame it doesn't work with 1.5..

[job0]

You can fix this but at your own risk, the extensions will load but they might not be compatible with the changes in that version of firefox. All extensions have a file called install.rdf. There is a section called maxVersion that Firefox checks to see if it should enable or disable the extension. If maxVersion is lower than the current version, then Firefox automatically disables the extension because it considers it to be incompatible.

To modify install.rdf do the following

1. Close Firefox
2. Open %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
3. Delete extensions.rdf
4. Go to the extensions folder.
5. Now you'll have to go to every folder there and edit its install.rdf file with a texteditor such as notepad.
6. You will see something like this:
CODE

<em:targetApplication>
    <Description>
      <em:id>{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}</em :id>
      <em:minVersion>0.8</em:minVersion>
      <em:maxVersion>1.0+</em:maxVersion>
    </Description>
  </em:targetApplication>

Change maxVersion to 1.4, save the install.rdf.

Re:Shame it doesn't work with 1.5..

[jeffehobbs]

Install the Nightly Tester Tools extension and it will work just fine.

~jeff

Up to date libraries

[jurt1235]

Don't I just need to know the Linux kernel version that the binaries were built with, so I know if I have up-to-date libraries?

That is called the Linux Standard Base, to which about all commercial and several non commercial linux distributors adhere to. So, if it is LSB compatible (would be a handy note from google), it will run on Redhat, but also on Debian, SuSE, mandrake and many others.

Re:Why RedHat only?

[cerelib]

They probably do that because they really do not care about supporting every linux distro. They are just throwing linux a bone. Do you think google is going to test it on Debian, Suse, Redhat, Gentoo, and Slack? Why would they? They know that most distros can at least be configured to have the same things as Redhat so just test it on Redhat and let the linux users figure it out. Like you said, it did not deter you from trying it on Kubuntu. It is cost-benefit. The linux community likes the fact that they released anything for linux and that is all they wanted. They still know that the Windows user base is the big target.

Re:Shame it doesn't work with 1.5..

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Download the toolbar .xpi ("save as" over the link)

2) Open the .xpi as a zip file. It has seven folders and 2 files. One is "license.txt" and the other is "install.rdf"

3) Edit "install.rdf" in your Notepad-style text editor.

4) Look for this:

<em:minVersion>1.0</em:minVersion>

<em:maxVersion>1.0+</em:maxVersion>

5) Change the valor "1.0+" to "2.0+" or so (it must target your firefox number version (1.5 or whatever)).

6) Save the changes.

7) Install the extension (Ctrl+O and choose the "google-toolbar.xpi" already downloaded in your PC and just changed)

Hope this works. Cheers.

Spell Check

[SumDog]

I think the most useful feature of the google toolbar is the spell check. Many places, such as slashdot, don't have spell check and some places, such as Livejournal, have spell check but it really sucks.

I realize now that there are probably many other firefox extentions out there with spell check, but the first one I came across and used was in the google toolbar.

I currently use it with Gentoo and on some firefox releases I had some trouble with the toolbar crashing/hanging as well as the spell check correction box appearing half way down the page. I am anxious to try out this new release and see if a lot of these issue have been solved.

Re:Spell Check

[SumDog]

Well there is aspell/pspell (which replaced the older ispell) which is the standard library most Linux apps link into, but you're right. There is no system wide spell check like Mac OSX has. I also like the OSX system wide speech synth you can use with almost any application. My old roommate used it to read off Something Awful pages while we ate dinner. He really hated Safari (and Konquror for that matter) and wished the option existed in Firefox as well.

Re:Spell Check

[Kethinov]

Google toolbar's spellcheck is better than Safari's on Mac because it highlights words that are misspelled within the form. In Safari, you have to right click on each one.

Take a look at this screenshot

Slow script warning

[nonpareility]

I hope they've fixed the bug that caused "A script on this page is causing mozilla to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive. Do you want to abort the script?" to show up. Extensions that don't work correctly is one thing, but it's unacceptable when they affect other parts of the browser.

Re:Wait..

[jpaz]

Here is your link to Googlebar.

Googlebar

Re:Shame it doesn't work with 1.5..

[masklinn]

Virtual +1 informative to parent, this tool is a blessing (even though it's nout enough for some extensions) for anyone using 1.5 beta of the 1.6 dev versions

Re:Shame it doesn't work with 1.5..

[veg_all]

3. Delete extensions.rdf

Ouch. Careful there. You should back up your profile before mucking around in that XML. Also, the entire proposed solution sounds a little drastic. If you can download the .xpi (I remember google having made this a little difficult) you only need edit that extension. Instructions here.

Re:Silly Speed Fetishes

[MyLongNickName]

You can roll your eyes all you want. I do NOT have this problem with Opera. Adobe might suck, but there is no reason a buggy app should crash your browser, or even cause it to become unresponsive.

And NOT using PDF is not a viable solution to most people.