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."

Wait..

[Anonymous Coward]

why? doesnt firefox have a built in one...?

The browser should be functional

[infoterror]

I agree. Before we start another trendy "reinventing the browser" drive, whether Flock or something else, we should at least make one that's rock-solid and fast. Firefox is great in many ways, because it's more secure than IE, but it's slower and crashes more than IE. When I develop, I almost always use IE because I know there will be less downtime from crashes and cache-related bugs.

Re:Google toolbar

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't the whole idea behind Firefox (Phoenix back then) was to be a much faster, more lightweight Mozilla?

I know I will probably get modded down

[iamnerd]

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

Silly Speed Fetishes

[FhnuZoag]

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.

Re:The browser should be functional

[masklinn]

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.

Re:Silly Speed Fetishes

[PhoenxHwk]

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.

Re:Google toolbar

[Taladar]

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.

Re:Silly Speed Fetishes

[njyoder]

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.

Re:Silly Speed Fetishes

[Anonymous Coward]

Is your hand shaped differently than most people's? Ctrl-Tab is quite awkward for me and many other people.

Stories Don't Get Much Lamer Than This

[Cheirdal]

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.