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Google Firefox Toolbar Out Of Beta

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the standard-issue-plugins dept.

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."

45 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Shame it doesn't work with 1.5.. by Dogers · · Score: 3, Funny

    Claims it's not compatible and refuses to install. Don't they support other beta programs? :)

    --
    I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
    1. Re:Shame it doesn't work with 1.5.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      download the .xpi, edit the install.rdf in the archive, set max version to 1.5. YMMV.

    2. Re:Shame it doesn't work with 1.5.. by job0 · · Score: 5, Informative
      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.

    3. Re:Shame it doesn't work with 1.5.. by jeffehobbs · · Score: 5, Informative

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

      ~jeff

    4. Re:Shame it doesn't work with 1.5.. by masklinn · · Score: 2, Informative

      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

      --
      "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
    5. Re:Shame it doesn't work with 1.5.. by veg_all · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

      --
      grammar-lesson free since 1999. (rescinded - 2005)
  2. Google toolbar by timecop · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As most of you know, the more extensions you add to FIREFOX the slower it becomes.
    With standard firefox taking ~1second to open a new window, after loading Google toolbar and couple other "extensions", opening new window in FIREFOX will take several seconds.
    I'm not even talking about starting a new copy of firefox after the old ones crash, that takes anywhere from 3 to 10 seconds depending how much of it was moved out of disk cache.

    Perhaps it's time FIREFOX/Mozilla developers stop adding useless features, and concentrate on making FIREFOX *fast*? I'm sorry, but opening a new window of ANY application on a Pentium-M 2.13Ghz with 1.5GB memory should NOT take more than 0.01second. IE6SP1 opens instantly, and so do new windows of the same browser. Food for thought.

    1. Re:Google toolbar by Taladar · · Score: 2, Insightful
      All of these were timed by hand using a stopwatch, so the results aren't perfect. The units are 1/100s
      And from this I'd say you are nuts. You can't stop anything below a second by hand accurately.
      --
      Linux is not Windows
    2. Re:Google toolbar by kevin_conaway · · Score: 3, Funny

      Anyone else find it humorous that a guy named timecop is complaining about the time it takes to open an app?

  3. Google and Beta by Kylere · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wish Microsoft and Google could merge, then Microgle would produce beta products that worked already, and alpha products that are not impressive enough to upgrade to!

  4. Worth noting.. by footissimo · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  5. Why RedHat only? by bogaboga · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have seen that when most software companies are to release software for Linux, the impression they give is that Linux *is* RedHat, which is wrong. Take Google for example. I have just installed the toolbar on Kubuntu with Firefox 1.0.7 with absolutely no hitches, but Google advertises RedHat alone. The same goes for Yahoo with their online games. These games run fine on any Linux distro I have tried with java properly configured, but Yahoo says somewhere on their site that [name-of-game] is not compatible with Unix or Macintosh computers. Heck RedHat is primarily a server OS...sheesh!

    1. Re:Why RedHat only? by cerelib · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Why RedHat only? by jrcamp · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Google should be smart enough to know that extensions work the same in Firefox on every operating system Firefox supports. It's not like we're talking about having to worry about ABI compatability here. It's just a bunch of javascript.

  6. Not for Deer Park by broothal · · Score: 4, Informative

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

  7. Official by michaelzhao · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is the only official Google release. Its really not that big of a deal when there are several other 3rd party Firefox extentions that add the same functionality. The only thing it does different, is add the Google suggest which I have found annoying to begin with. However, it is still a big win for Google as they have a bunch of happy Firefox users. If those happy Firefox users also happen to be stockholders, well... you get the picture.

  8. "I already have googlesearch in Firefox" by Sweetshark · · Score: 2, Informative
    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.
  9. Re:Wait.. by gid13 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  10. I know I will probably get modded down by iamnerd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    but am I the only one that thinks toolbars are a waste of space?

    1. Re:I know I will probably get modded down by myukew · · Score: 3, Funny

      no, theyre useful

      --
      See pictures of tits
  11. Re:The browser should be functional by BladeMelbourne · · Score: 3, Informative
    "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?

  12. Google suggest isn't new by NineNine · · Score: 3, Informative

    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".

  13. Silly Speed Fetishes by FhnuZoag · · Score: 5, Insightful

    13 extensions installed, still takes less than a second on mine. This is on a 1.5 GHz with 256 MB ram. Perhaps there is something wrong with your computer? Spyware, perhaps, from Internet Explorer use?

    In any case, Firefox isn't really about windows - rather, tabs, which open in the background. If you learn to use that, you will get much better performance. IE meanwhile is designed to open new windows, and is also preloaded as part of the operating system. Obviously it has an advantage here.

    Nor is it the fault of the Mozilla devteam that people are making, and using slow extensions. The whole point of firefox is the customisability. What is useless to you certainly isn't useless to other people. To people like ME, speed is itself useless - page download times massively eclipse time taken by the browser itself. The firefox developers can't be all things to all people. If speed is a priority over customisability and compatibility, perhaps you are better off using a different browser (like Opera, or maybe Lynx) instead.

    1. Re:Silly Speed Fetishes by PhoenxHwk · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I still have a gripe in this regard. Each tab should really open in its own thread, so that its loading and rendering does not stall the whole interface. Drives me nuts when I start opening a bunch of new tabs (a la while looking at the slashdot front page or other forums) and then I have to sit through a stall before opening a new one. That's one spot where I definitely prefer Opera.

    2. Re:Silly Speed Fetishes by njyoder · · Score: 2, Insightful

      is also preloaded as part of the operating system. Obviously it has an advantage here.

      That's not a valid excuse, Firefox is slow due to poor optimization. MSIE doesn't have access to super magical rendering features that Firefox doesn't. It wasn't until Firefox 1.5 Beta that they got speeds comparable to IE's and before then all the apologists were stepping in to say that IE had some magical advantage.

      Nor is it the fault of the Mozilla devteam that people are making, and using slow extensions.

      The extensions aren't slow, Mozilla's Javascript interpreter is slow. The fact of the matter is, if you want certain functionality, you will inevitably slow down Firefox regardless of how well optimized the Javascript is. You want to know why you don't receive complaints concering speed for plugins for IE? Because they're all compiled--making them super fast. There's no reason why Mozilla couldn't at least compile to bytecode or JIT it.

      There should be a name for this phenomenon. When there is a performance issue or other fundamental issue with some technology, apologists first shift the blame on third parties (e.g. people who develop stuff for it). Then years later when they finally get their act together and fix the problems and make it run well and the same exact third party stuff runs very fast, they suddenly say "oh yeah it was slow in the past, but now it's really totally awesome, which totally excuses our past dishonest behavior where we claimed it was everyone elses fault!"

      I get sick of this intellectual dishonesty. People only admit it's a problem with the group that they're defending only AFTER it's all been fixed and is a thing of a past. While it's a problem, before it's a fixed, it's always someone elses fault. Whether it be performance, security or something elses, there's always something.

      To people like ME, speed is itself useless - page download times massively eclipse time taken by the browser itself.

      They do? Are you on dial-up? Because the page actually downloads faster than Firefox can render it for me for many pages and I'm on a 2Ghz P4. Most pages will download in a fraction of a second and with all the AJAX/javascript stuff out there, rendering time greatly increases. No, it's not because of spyware, stop using that BS excuse, this is a common problem reported by everyone. The fact that 1.5 beta managed to speed things up shows that it was, in fact, an issue with the developers of Firefox and not spyware.

      The firefox developers can't be all things to all people.

      So they must have a slow browser? You act as if speed is an unimportant feature, that's ludicrous. With the rising popularity of AJAX technology, optimizing their Javascript and rendering better damn well be a priority.

      If speed is a priority over customisability and compatibility, perhaps you are better off using a different browser (like Opera, or maybe Lynx) instead.

      That is the silliest false dichotomy I've ever heard. Why must either of those be sacrificed? There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON why they can't optimize their code while maintain customizability and compatibility.

    3. Re:Silly Speed Fetishes by MyLongNickName · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
  14. IE is preloaded in memory, mozilla seamonkey too by free2 · · Score: 2, Informative

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

  15. Re:Slashdot playing favorites? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    The FAQ clearly states that submissions from bland usernames will be rejected outright. Try changing it to "HOTBabe18NotWearingPantiesRightNow" and your articles will be accepted immediately.

    Also, try lowering your UID. 917138 is awfully high to be taken seriously by the editorial staff.

  16. I know what you mean by DrSkwid · · Score: 2, Informative

    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!

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  17. Re:The browser should be functional by masklinn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sorry? developping with MSIE?

    MSIE's cache blows, MSIE's refresh blows, MSIE has no development tools (no JS console, no JS debugger even remotely close to Venkman, and the recent Web Dev Toolbar is sub-par compared to Chris Pederick's, including the godawful DOM Inspector), MSIE doesn't allow you to see the current (interpreted/DOM-modified) source of your web page, MSIE doesn't allow you to change your CSS on the fly.

    Firefox does.

    Dev'ing with MSIE is like ripping your arms off before starting to write a book, you can still do it but the extra pain and harshness ain't quite worth it.

    --
    "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
  18. and for everyone that hates on google by k3v0 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    because they don't come out with linux versions:
    Windows XP/2000 SP3+, Mac OS X 10.2+, or Red Hat Linux 8.0+
  19. The alphabet according to google suggest by markh1967 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    a is for amazon
    b is for bbc
    c is for currency converter
    d is for dictionary
    e is for ebay
    f is for firefox
    g is for gmail
    h is for hotmail
    i is for ikea
    j is for jokes
    k is for kelly blue book
    l is for lyrics
    m is for mapquest
    n is for news
    o is for orbitz
    p is for paris hilton
    q is for quotes
    r is for ryanair
    s is for spybot
    t is for target
    u is for ups
    v is for valentines day
    w is for weather
    x is for xbox
    y is for yahoo
    z is for zip codes
    1 is for 1
    2 is for 24
    3 is for 3m
    4 is for 411
    5 is for 50 cent
    6 is for 60 minutes
    7 is for 7th heaven
    8 is for 89.com
    9 is for 911
    0 is for 02

    --
    Input error. Replace user and press any key to continue.
    1. Re:The alphabet according to google suggest by DeadSea · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It is also interesting to see the most popular web sites. Start by typing www. into google suggest. The top 10 are:

      1. www.yahoo.com - Search/Directory
      2. www.hotmail.com - Email
      3. www.google.com - Search
      4. www.ebay.com - Shopping
      5. www.msn.com - Portal
      6. www.aol.com - Portal
      7. www.ebay.co.uk - Shopping
      8. www.irs.gov - Government
      9. www.mapquest.com - Maps
      10. www.amazon.com - Shopping

      Typing one more letter shows you the top sites for that letter. Here is the top for each letter:

      This is some random commentary to make sure that my post has enough characters per line on average to get by the lameness filter. Just a few more words should do it. Then I will be over the limit. Maybe you would like to hear a bit about my projects: Attesoro - A internationalization editor for Java programs. Coinmill - A currency conversion website with many currencies, and features such as abilty to parse English sentences asking for currency conversion. Java Utilities - Utilities for common task in the Java programming language such as parsing CSV files and string manipulation.

  20. Up to date libraries by jurt1235 · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    --

    My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
  21. Spell Check by SumDog · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Spell Check by SumDog · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Spell Check by Kethinov · · Score: 2, Informative

      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

      --
      You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
  22. Slow script warning by nonpareility · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  23. Better yet - try Yahoo! instant search by mrklin · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Try http://instant.search.yahoo.com/ Get answers as you type.

    I have also found that in Yahoo! advanced search (http://search.yahoo.com/web/advanced?ei=UTF-8) you can now search for Creative Commons content!

    Google remains my primary search engine but Yahoo! is an extremely close second with results every bit as relevant.

  24. What do you mean by Beta? by gaanagaa · · Score: 3, Funny

    I thought "Google Beta" was the full name and "Beta" was the surname for Google.

  25. Re:Wait.. by jpaz · · Score: 3, Informative
    Here is your link to Googlebar.

    Googlebar

  26. Re:now it's opera's turn by croddy · · Score: 2, Funny

    opera has around 0.09% of the browser market. google's time would be better spent on a custom distribution of Lynx.

  27. Re:Credit Card Autofill by rcamera · · Score: 2, Funny

    we at slashdot would love to help you. please fill in all dialogs for autofill, take a high-quality screenshot of the window, and reply to this post with a link to the image. upon seeing the entered information, we should be able to help you with your problem.

    regards,

    --
    Wave upon wave of demented avengers March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream
  28. Stories Don't Get Much Lamer Than This by Cheirdal · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Oh joy, a story about a freaking toolbar. Yay. I thank you for keeping us informed of cutting edge technology like the google toolbar. It's an invaluabe resource for those of us too lazy to type in "google" or click on our booksmarks to bring up Google. The real bottom line is Google is a commercial entity. They're not here to help you. They're in business to make money. I'm not putting a commercial entities toolbar (or any toolbar) on my browser. If I want to use Google, and quite often I do, I'll go to their site directly and type in my queries. I don't care about their lame auto-fill in feature and other garbage that comes with their remarkable toolbar.

  29. Re:Waste of space by jesser · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is it just me, or does the Google Toolbar come back when you open a new Firefox window or instance? I'm using Mac OS X and a recent Firefox build from the MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH, and I installed Google Toolbar using Nightly Tester Tools to override Firefox's compatibility check.

    --
    The shareholder is always right.