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."

Google toolbar

[timecop]

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.

Why RedHat only?

[bogaboga]

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!

Official

[michaelzhao]

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.

and for everyone that hates on google

[k3v0]

because they don't come out with linux versions:

Windows XP/2000 SP3+, Mac OS X 10.2+, or Red Hat Linux 8.0+

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

The alphabet according to google suggest

[markh1967]

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

Re:The alphabet according to google suggest

[Pneuma ROCKS]

So, if somebody produces a new product or company and expects to be google's favorite, they should try and use a first letter with a "weaker" association, say ryanair. God know you can't beat Paris Hilton. Not for the next 15 minutes, at least.

Better yet - try Yahoo! instant search

[mrklin]

Try http://instant.search.yahoo.com/ [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 [yahoo.com]) 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.

Re:Why RedHat only?

[jrcamp]

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.

Re:The alphabet according to google suggest

[DeadSea]

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

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

• a is for www.aol.com [aol.com] - Portal
• b is for www.bbc.co.uk [bbc.co.uk] - News
• c is for www.cnn.com [cnn.com] - News
• d is for www.dictionary.com [dictionary.com] - Reference
• e is for www.ebay.com [ebay.com] - Shopping
• f is for www.food.gov.uk [food.gov.uk] - Government
• g is for www.google.com [google.com] - Search
• h is for www.hotmail.com [hotmail.com] - Email
• i is for www.irs.gov [irs.gov] - Government
• j is for www.juno.com [juno.com] - Internet service provider
• k is for www.kbb.com [kbb.com] - Consumer information
• l is for www.lyrics.com [lyrics.com] - Music
• m is for www.msn.com [msn.com] - Portal
• n is for www.nick.com [nick.com] - Kids
• o is for www.orbitz.com [orbitz.com] - Travel
• p is for www.pogo.com [pogo.com] - Games
• q is for www.qvc.com [qvc.com] - Shopping
• r is for www.rotten.com [rotten.com] - Information
• s is for www.sears.com [sears.com] - Shopping (sorry slashdot)
• t is for www.target.com [target.com] - Shopping
• u is for www.usps.com [usps.com] - Government
• v is for www.verizon.com [verizon.com] - Telephone service
• w is for www.weather.com [weather.com] - Weather
• x is for www.xanga.com [xanga.com] - Blogs
• y is for www.yahoo.com [yahoo.com] - Portal
• z is for www.zappos.com [zappos.com] - Shopping

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 [attesoro.org] - A internationalization editor for Java programs. Coinmill [coinmill.com] - A currency conversion website with many currencies, and features such as abilty to parse English sentences asking for currency conversion. Java Utilities [ostermiller.org] - Utilities for common task in the Java programming language such as parsing CSV files and string manipulation.

Re:Waste of space

[jesser]

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.