Google Toolbar 2.0
 

From http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20030626S0004

Search powerhouse Google has released beta 2.0 of its Google Toolbar, adding a pop-up ad blocker, form auto-fill, and one-click blogger posting to its enhancement for Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
Google Toolbar, which is free for downloading from the Google Web site, is an add-on to IE that drops a special toolbar at the top of the browser's display. A search field lets users enter search strings without returning to the Google home page.

New to beta 2.0 are a pop-up Web ad blocker, a single-click auto-fill feature for completing forms with the personal information -- name, address, and the like -- that Web forms often require, and a way to quickly post a message referring to the current page to the Blogger.com Web site.

Google Toolbar beta 2.0 requires a PC running Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, or XP, and works on the IE 5.0 and later browsers from Microsoft.

I really like the google tool bar. It sounds like thet are adding some great features.

OOOhhh.. I just installed it. I like it already. The popup blocker is worth it all by itself.

Adrik

I love the google tool bar, it is the most usefull thing i have found for IE ;)

How does it block popups? I like how mozilla disables the javascript (sometimes I need it to download a file or something) so I can just turn popupblocker off.

good find! I didn't know about this.

Google Toolbar is awesome and I hope this version will be as well.

Whats your take on it sending info back the google. It says it doesnt take your IP, but . . .

Does everyone here have the advanced functions enabled?

I love the google tool bar and the new one looks really good.

I've used the Google Toolbar for years and I love it. I have ZoneAlarm Pro, so the pop-up blocking is taken care of already, but the other features seem pretty cool.

Cool, I've been using v1.0 for months, thanks for the heads up!

i use goolge bar and popup stopper....so i'll have to check out the beta

Thanks, never knew about this.

Rather than waste the screen real-estate with the Google toolbar, I just use an IE shortcut. By adding a few entries into the windows registry, you can search google using the IE address field. For example, to search for "Monty Python", just type g "Monty Python". Here's the registry modification:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl]
"provider"=""

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\G]
@="http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=%s&safe=images&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&lr=lang_en&num=50&as_scoring=d&hl=en"

A shortcut to any url can be created. My google shortcut also sets the language to English and the return count to 50.

I had the old Google toolbar, my response was: Die spyware, Die!

It's only spyware if you install the features that mimic spyware. The Page Rank feature, among a couple others, sends back anonymous usage statistics to Google. You opted to use this feature before downloading the toolbar, and there's a version that doesn't include this at all. Should have read a bit more closely, pal.

I'm usually completely against things such as these, but the google toolbar has been one of the best i've seen.

I often recomend it to anyone who isnt familar with computers since it gives them a bit more control with out having to search for it.

As for the spyware bit, its clean if you bother read the installation page.

I might install it at work.. AT home I'm using Apple's Safari browser which has a Google search field built in - very useful :) I have google bookmarked anyway, so it's not that big a deal to get to it...

that's what i do but TweakUI for windows xp has a gui for creating those shortcuts

Hmmmm, I run TweakUI, but I've never noticed that. I'll check it out. Thanks.