A c t i o n f o r L i b r a r i e s — S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 3

The Internet Connection

By Michael Sauers

New Features in Google Toolbar
Long-time readers of this column are already familiar with the Google Toolbar (The Internet Connection, August 2002). Many others have discovered this wonderful tool on their own. For those of you unfamiliar with the Google Toolbar, it's a small piece of software that you can download and install in Internet Explorer to give you direct access to Google without having to visit the Google site first.

Unless you are a frequent visitor to the Google Toolbar home page, you also may not be aware that Google developers are currently beta testing version 2.0. I've been using this new version for the past month, and it's new features have me enthusiastic. The major new features include:

Pop-up blocker: Since the demise of PopUp Killer (The Internet Connection, January 2002), I've been looking for an up-to-date controller of pop-up windows. With the addition of this feature to the Google Toolbar, my wishes have been fulfilled. It works so well, I uninstalled PopUp Killer.
Form filler: With this feature enabled, the Google Toolbar remembers what you have typed into previous Web form fields. When it anticipates that it can fill in a form field for you, it turns the field yellow. With one click of a button on the toolbar, all of the yellow fields are automatically filled in. (This feature is easily disabled, as it would not be appropriate on public access computers.)
Automatic Blogger posting: If you have a blog and it's hosted by Blogger, the new Google Toolbar has a blog button that assists you in creating a blog post of the page you're currently looking at and then publishes it for you.

Although this is still technically a beta version, it is stable. I have yet to have a single problem with it on my several computers. This software is free.

More information on the Google Toolbar, including downloading instructions, can be found at toolbar.google.com/.

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