Download and Review Software

What are Add-ons?

Add-ons are small pieces of software that can add new features or tiny tweaks to your Firefox. They can add new search engines or dictionaries in other languages, change the look of Firefox with a new theme, or much more. Take a look around and see what add-ons can do for you.

Google Toolbar

The Google Toolbar is a program or add on for Internet Explorer and so cannot be added to a site as such, rather installed on your computer. Benefits include easy searching, checking PageRank, easy access to Backlinks, Directory categories, and so on. Drawbacks included focusing too much on PageRank, relying on Google too much, and so on.

There are varying opinions on the merits of the Google Toolbar, if you read through the information in this thread you should get a good idea on current thinking.

Myself, i love this small add on very much. It help my surf is fast, safe and comfortabke. Installing Google's 463KB toolbar is about a minute to download. Once the toolbar is up and running, you can add or remove buttons, set the buttons as icon only or icon and text, and drag the search box bigger or smaller.

Google toolbar gives you the requisite specific search options, including searching the entire Web, querying Google Images, News, Groups (for Usenet posts), and Froogle (Google's shopping search). You can also search for stock quotes--Google sends you to Yahoo Finance for that--and dictionary entries through Dictionary.com, but there's no weather search--sorry, Weather Channel fans. You can also highlight search terms on the page you're visiting and cycle through search results from the toolbar.

The Google toolbar is free of charge. Just go to http://toolbar.google.com, download it, and you are now ready for some easy searching. The Google toolbar works with Microsoft Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP or 2003 Server.

If you use Internet Explorer as your browser, you must have version 5.0 or greater installed. There is also a similar version available for Firefox users. There is no Mac version today, but Apple's Safari Web browser offers a Google search box, enabling Google searches directly from the address bar. After installation, the Google toolbar will appear under the Internet Explorer or Firefox toolbar. If it doesn't appear automatically, just click on View, Toolbars, and then click Google to turn it on. Those who know me, know that I hate to give up any of my precious screen space, but I have acquiesced for this product since I find it very useful.

Google Toolbar has a small bar that gives you an idea of the Web site's PageRank. PageRank is google's unique way of ranking Web sites relies on the Web's link structure as an indicator of the value of an individual page. Google assumes the more times a page is linked to other pages, the more popular it is. The PageRank button is only enabled if you choose the advanced functionality option when you install the toolbar. If you choose the advanced options, the Google Toolbar automatically sends URL's of the sites you visit to Google.

Another features of Google toolbar is a "Page Info" button. With Page Info you will have access to more information about a page such as similar pages and pages that link back to that page. This is a very nice feature because its cached snapshot of the Web page in question. Google takes a snapshot of each page examined as it crawls the Web. Google then saves or caches these pages as a back up in case the original page is unavailable. When you click on the "Cached" link, you will see the Web page as it looked when Google indexed it. This feature can be very useful. Nothing is more disappointing than to return to a Web site and find that it has changed and the old information is no longer available. Sometimes the saved Google copy will have the information that you need.

The pop-up eliminator works quite well. Instead of seeing those aggravating pop-ups, you hear a small beep and see that the number of pop-ups that have been blocked increases. Although there is no way to see the ads individually, you can allow a pop-up to appear by holding the CTRL or Shift key while clicking the link that generates the pop-up. If you visit a site often and wish to see the pop-ups on that site you can add the site to a special whitelist.

The form filler lets you add the information that you want to share with other Web sites eliminating the need to retype that information over and over again. When Google sees that there is a form to be filled out, it can help you enter your information quickly and easily.

After you install the Google Toolbar, be sure to click on the Options button where you can set up the toolbar to your liking. There is even a “Vote” button which allows you to express your approval or disapproval for any Web site. Be sure to click on the happy face approval button when you visit www.compukiss.com and other valuable Web sites.

The new Word Find button lets you type any word into the GoogleToolbar search box and press the Word Find icon to find each occurrence of the word on the current web page. Or you can fill the word and press the Highlight icon (look like a highlighting pen), then scroll down the webpage you are on. Every instance of the text you filled in will be highlighted. Very useful!

The Google toolbar can also be customized with several other features. You will want to spend some time to investigate its many useful tools. With Google and the Google toolbar, finding information on the Internet has just gotten easier.

System requirements:
• Windows XP/2000 SP3+, Mac OS X 10.2+, or Linux
• Firefox 1.5+
• Internet Explorer version available here

Download and Review Google Toolbar here.