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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."

14 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. 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!

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

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

  3. 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!

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

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

  5. 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.

  6. 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?

  7. 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.

  8. 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
  9. 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.

  10. 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

  11. 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.

  12. 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.