Googlebar Releases
This page contains links to our most recent releases, as well as the full release notes and list of changes. If you would like to link to our latest release, the newest stable release can always be found in the XPI-stable installer for your convenience.[ Version 0.9 ] [ Version 0.8 ] [ Version 0.7 ] [ Version 0.6 ] [ Version 0.5 ] [ Archived Versions ]
Version 0.9.5 (released March 17, 2005): What's New
- Firefox Users - Install or Download (Installer created ).- Mozilla Suite Users - Install or Download (Installer created ).
New features:
- Colors used for highlighting search terms are now configurable (Bug 8938).
- The interface to configure the Googlebar buttons has been greatly improved (Bug 7486).
- A customizable menu "My Searches" can be added which contains your favourite searches.
- Enhanced Navigation buttons: The Previous and Next buttons now have a dropdown menu showing all available pages, the "Back to search results" button has a dropdown showing all Google result pages.
-
It is now possible to use modifier keys with the Search word
buttons (Bug 6044):
- Shift-Click: search backwards
- Ctrl-Click: case-sensitive
- Alt-Click: entire word
- New Special Searches:
- URLs are not searched for but are directly shown (the Googlebar can be used as replacement for the standard URL bar).
- The automatic selection of the search box content when selecting can now it can now be configured (Bug 4740).
Notable bugs fixed:
- Fixed several preferences bugs (prefs not being saved etc.)
- Heaps of code-cleanup and small improvements to get rid of JavaScript warnings.
- Fixed some issues with search word highlighting (Bug 5924, Bug 5925).
- Fixed mouse handling on Googlebar menu button (Bug 5911)
- Search box is now cleared when clearing the search history (Bug 6990)
- Search word buttons work correctly when using Google keywords like "site:" (Bug 7156).
- Search word buttons are properly updated when using multiple browser windows (Bug 5960).
Notes:
- Designed for both Firefox and Mozilla - uses Googlebar version 0.9.5.06.
- Uninstall the Googlebar before installing this version if you still have Firefox 0.9.1.
- If you already have Firefox 0.9.1 or higher, but still yet have a Googlebar below version 0.9.0.25, you still need to uninstall first.
- You will not lose your settings if you uninstall, then reinstall.
Version 0.8 (released March 5, 2004): What's New
- Install or Download (Installer created ).New features:
- Auto-generated search word buttons are now also available in new windows.
- Keyboard modifiers have become a lot more flexible (Bug 3679, Bug 4261, Bug 4269). The settings for the search "target" (i.e. New Window, New Tab, Same Window) and the search "type" (e.g. News, Groups, Lucky etc...) have been separated, so it's possible to set up almost any combination.
- Middle-Click on the Googlebar buttons now opens the result in a new Tab (to be consistent with standard behaviour of Middle-Click).
- Search results can now be optionally sorted by date for searches that support this (News and Groups).
- New items in the Googlebar context menu:
- "Cached copy of link": allows to fetch unreachable pages from Google's cache very easily (see Bug 5136).
- "Dictionary Search": Starts a Dictionary Search for selected text.
- Added support for international Google News searches.
- Added 10 new Google countries.
Notable bugs fixed:
- "Unites States" has been changed to "United States"!
- A lot of country preferences problems were (hopefully) fixed
- The history is now cleared when it is disabled. Also, there is no dropdown arrow besides the search field when the history is disabled anymore.
- The complete list can be found here.
Version 0.7: What's New
- Install or Download (Installer created ).New features:
- Users can now use the "unlock button positions" item on the context menu to allow them to drag and drop buttons to any desired location on the googlebar, in both Mozilla and Firebird.
- A new preference has been added to save the last search from our drop down menus. This will make the special searches and other menus function more like the "combined search button" in the Internet Explorer Google toolbar.
- Localizations in several other languages will be available soon via the Googlebarl10n project.
- The install script now supports localization.
- Power-users of the googlebar can easily add their own buttons via the googlebarextras files, simplifying the addition of extra non-google features without losing them when the user upgrades. We do not plan to make this a focus of development and support, but documentation is forthcoming.
- The "Up a directory" button can now be configured to skip slashes in the query strings of cgi scripts (see Bug 4056)
Notable bugs fixed:
- Non-ascii characters in history are now saved correctly.
- Problems with selecting several international google sites have been addressed.
- Find-term-in-page buttons now work across frames.
- Search keyword terms like "stocks:" are no longer shown as find-term buttons.
- Missing localization entities have been added to allow for more complete translation.
- Using "best+googlebar" as search term now creates two find-term buttons "best" and "googlebar" instead of just one.
- Setting the keyboard preferences of "CTRL", "ALT" and "SHIFT" to "Default" now uses the search mode defined for searching without a modifier key (instead of popping up an error box).
- Search terms with an apostrophe work now.
Notes:
- If you upgrade from a previous Googlebar version, your country preferences might be changed, so please check them after upgrading. The preferences can be reached through the "Google Toolbar Options" menubutton on the Googlebar itself or through the standard preferences dialog of your browser.
Version 0.6.17: What's New
- Install or Download (Installer created ).- New searches and menu items have been added for Universities and Google Answers.
- A new "result navigation" feature allows users to move back and forward between search results, or to return to the results page with one click. A related context menu item has also been added that allows users to choose the page on which navigation is based (for example, activating this on the Table of contents of a tutorial will cause the navigation buttons to go forward and backwards between sections)
- The preferences panel has been reorganized to group together related functions, and useful tips have been added.
- The default icon set has been revised and improved once again.
- The "highlight", "search for selected text", "up a directory", and "site search" buttons now have a disabled state where appropriate.
- The "site:" term no longer appears in site search queries.
- Preferences and shortcut keys now work correctly in Phoenix. Also, the SHIFT key may be used in place of the CTRL key for keyboard shortcuts- this should resolve problems on certain platforms where these keys are already assigned to other functions.
Version 0.5.07: What's new and improved
- Install or Download (Installer created ).This version includes major changes over the 0.4.5 series as well as an enormous number of important improvements over the 0.4.6 line. Among new features since our last full release are:
New features for users:
- The UI has been extensively reorganized. You now have the choice of combined topic menus or separate buttons for various searches. Also, Robert Mulcahy has contributed a set of new icons to match the visual style of mozilla; the old icons are available as an alternate stylesheet for experienced XUL hackers if desired (see our help page for details).
- The "help" option now takes users to our own help page, rather than that to Google's unrelated page.
- New searches for google labs Webquotes, Glossary, and Viewer have been added, as well as News, dictionary, Froogle and stock quotes.
- We now have a button to allow users to highlight all occurrences of search terms on the page.
- A bug with highlighting term buttons when window focus was not properly set has been fixed.
- A new context menu option allows the individual find-term-in-page buttons to be turned off. This saves horizontal space and keeps the toolbar textbox from being compressed when many buttons are generated. Also, buttons that do not fit on the toolbar will now be placed on a dropdown menu, similar to the behavior of bookmarks in Phoenix.
- If the find-term in page buttons are enabled, they will reflect the background colors for each highlighted term when the "highlight all" button is used.
- Improved up-directory button displays a dropdown list of multiple possibilities for faster navigation- for example, a visitor to www.site.com/folder/index.html would see options for www.site.com and www.site.com/folder on the list. This feature works with both subdomains and subdirectories.
- New keyboard shortcuts have been added to select the textbox and to hide the googlebar.
- The search history is now saved across browser settings- this can be cleared with the "clear search history" option on the Googlebar menu (click the "g" logo), and the number of searches saved altered on the prefs panel.
- The Googlebar now adds a "Googlebar items" option on the browser context menu by default with easy access to a number of Google options; this can be turned off if desired.
- The Googlebar now has a working preferences panel (click on the logo and select "Toolbar options..."). Options include...
- Modifier keys (like pushing control-enter) are now configurable and can be set to run any of our available searches.
- The "Googlebar items" context menu option can be shown or hidden as desired.
- The installed Googlebar version and build number is shown on the main preferences page.
- Users can select any of Google's international searches as the default.
- Users can choose to run their default search through the Google labs keyboard shortcuts page if they prefer.
- Any of Google's international web searches can also be used as the default. This may not work properly when combined with the Google Labs keyboard shortcuts, however.
- A new automated install script allows for the Googlebar to be disabled (though files are not removed- just references to the Googlebar in the places Mozilla registers installed add-ons); this does not work in Phoenix (which has its own methods). Instructions for complete manual removal are available on the help page.
Developers will like:
- We have implemented localization. This will allow users to translate the googlebar into other languages; please see our translations page for information on how to help get the googlebar in your language.
- Users of Mozilla 1.4 branch builds and above will be able to install to their profiles OR to the application directory with our improved install script; this should resolve many of the problems suffered by our linux/unix users previously forced to install as root.
- Improved theme compatibility and performance in some areas.
- Code has been reformatted to make it easier to read.
- Numerous bug fixes.
Known issues
If you find a bug, please let us know; however, we are already of aware of the following issues, so always check for duplicates before filing a new bug.- Installation of XPI files was disabled for Mozilla 1.3 on the Mac OS-X platform only; if you are having trouble installing on Mac OS-X with this version, it's not us, honest. On other platforms, make sure the "Advanced: Enable software installation" preference is selected if you are having trouble installing.
- It is recommended that Linux/Unix users install the Googlebar to their user profile directories, as there otherwise may be conflicts in attempts to install to the program directory (under root). This requires a version of mozilla newer than 1.3.
- While we applaud the enthusiasm of anyone who installs the Googlebar in BOTH their profile AND chrome directories, this may lead to crashes, loading errors, or multiple overlapping Googlebars appearing. Installing in both locations at once is not recommended.
- In the event that installing produces a large red XUL error on the bottom of the screen, please do not tell John Woods, as this may be a consequence of bug 1932; many sleepless nights were spent fixing this issue, from which he is still recovering.
- The preferences panel does not display properly in some versions of Phoenix; however, it can still be reached by the "Toolbar options..." menuitem on the menu under the Googlebar logo.
- Certain special shortcut keys to select or show/hide the toolbar do not function in phoenix. However, workarounds are available as follows:If you would like to hide the toolbar while using Phoenix, we recommend either squinting really hard or disabling the extension in Phoenix's extension manager. To select the toolbar textbox, please use the mouse.
- For any problem not mentioned here, browse our Help and FAQ's page; your question may already have been answered.
Installation
Other
This release was made possible by the contributions of numerous talented programmers, including developers new to the project (namely Franki Cheung, John Woods, Bernd Kuemmerlen, and Robert Mulcahy) as well as many other outside individuals. If you would like to become involved, see our Volunteers or Translations page for ideas- there's still plenty more to do and help is always appreciated.
Older Archived Versions:
Version 0.4.6 RC3 (November 15, 2002):- Install or Download (deprecated - no longer available)
Version 0.4.6 RC2 (October 4, 2002):
- Install or Download (deprecated - no longer available)
Version 0.4.5 RC1 (April 6, 2002):
- Install or Download (deprecated - no longer available)
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