Google has released from beta its Firefox search toolbar, which includes features such as spell check and a word translator.
Google also offers a search toolbar for Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer, which does not have the auto-suggest capability and is less customizable than the Firefox application. The Mountain View, Calif., search engine released the Firefox toolbar.
Although Google’s toolbar — which provides users with easy access to advanced functionality such as spellchecking and translation — has been available for Internet Explorer for more than four years, this is the first version to appear for users of the Firefox browser, developed by the Mozilla foundation. Users of open source alternatives have until now used the GoogleBar — an independent project which emulates most of the Google toolbar features.
The add-in, released after two months in beta, also adds to the open-source web browser capabilities that include query suggestions while someone types in the search box and an auto-filler of forms for faster retail site checkouts. It has pretty much the same features as the latest IE toolbar except of course for things like the popup blocker, the e-mail said. Pop-up blocking is an in-built feature of Firefox.
However, an e-mail to GoogleBar developers — sent under the name of Google engineer Fritz Schneider and dated 1 July — refers to the proposed Firefox toolbar. I thought I’d drop you a note to give a heads up on something Google will be releasing next week: a version of our Internet Explorer toolbar for Firefox, the e-mail reads. The e-mail nominates 7 July as the likely release date for the toolbar, and asks the developers to hold off commenting to the press until the company sends out its own statement the day before.
More specific details are also provided, with the e-mail claiming the software will work on Microsoft’s Windows 2000 and XP platforms, Mac OS X 10.2, and ‘Linux 8.0+’. The latter is likely to encompass the more recent releases of popular Linux distributions like SuSE, Red Hat and Mandrake, several of which are at release versions eight or above.
We really appreciate the work you folks did to fill this gap in our products for so long, the e-mail said, adding that a current link to the Googlebar project on Google’s toolbar Web site will be maintained, so users can make the choice of which toolbar they’d like to install.
A spokesperson from Google was not immediately available to comment on the e-mail. The company’s competitor Yahoo released a Firefox version of its own toolbar in February.