Advice on browsers

[Coromandel]

Hello all

Until the recent demise of my old laptop I was using Windows XP and Firefox with Google Toolbar. My new laptop has Windows 7. Straight away I downloaded Firefox and then tried to add Google Toolbar, only to discover that the two no longer work together. Do I just have to learn to live with it? Or is there another better browser out there?

[terrysfamily]

I have windows 7 and Firefox but have never had Google toolbar. I always use the Google search in the top righthand corner. Is/was there a difference?

[Peter Goodey]

I also reckon that the Firefox search bar (note that it doesn't have to be a Google search) does most of what I want. In any case I reckon Google has now joined the Evil Empire so I use it a lot less than I used to.

Some add-ons can be induced to be compatible by installing the add-on called "Add-on Compatibility Reporter".

[Coromandel]

I have windows 7 and Firefox but have never had Google toolbar. I always use the Google search in the top righthand corner. Is/was there a difference?[/IMG]

Google Toolbar had a lot of extras besides a Google search box . . . it is already fading from my memory but here are some of the good things I remember about it:

• the search terms from your current search appeared as buttons on the toolbar; clicking them found where they were mentioned on the web page. (I know you can still find words using Edit Find but having the buttons saved retyping things.)
• there were little icons for going straight to Google Books, Google News, etc. (now it is easy to switch to these from an ordinary Google search so I can live without them)
• there was another icon that allowed you to go up a level on a website, without having to go in manually and delete the end part of the website address

There were also Google Translate options.

The feature I miss most is that when you opened a new tab in Firefox, it would have thumbnails of sites you'd visited recently (or most often?) which was really handy. Now when I open a new tab it is just a blank page.

In any case I reckon Google has now joined the Evil Empire so I use it a lot less than I used to.

Which search engine(s) do you use instead?

[Peter Goodey]

I may be out-of-date with what I said about the Add-on Compatibility Reporter

[arthurk]

The feature I miss most is that when you opened a new tab in Firefox, it would have thumbnails of sites you'd visited recently (or most often?) which was really handy. Now when I open a new tab it is just a blank page.

A quick look at the Firefox add-ons site and a search for Speed Dial or Fast Dial brings up some options which I think do what you're looking for. It looked to me as though some require you to select which thumbnails to show, and some can be configured to show the most visited, or most recently visited sites.

Arthur

[Coromandel]

Thank you, Arthur! I have now downloaded the "FVD Speed Dial" add-on and have thumbnails back again.

P.S. and they're more sophisticated than before, with many options for which sites are shown and how. By default there are 25 thumbnails ranked according to how often I have visited them in the last month. Top of the list . . .
BG of course!

[arthurk]

Glad it works. I've never used the Google toolbar, nor a speed dial add-on, so it was a bit of a shot in the dark. (Actually I suppose I do have a kind of speed dial, as I've devised my own home page with lots of links to FH sites, and a second page with other kinds of link. No pretty pictures, but it seems to work.)

Arthur

Edited to add:
I've just remembered that I had a query about speed dial add-ons which use thumbnails. Is the thumbnail an image of the last time you visited the site, or is it updated in real time? And if the latter, how does that affect cookies? I stay permanently signed in at BG, and whenever I come back click on What's New. But if the add-on had been gathering info about the site while I'd been away, does that mean that What's New might not show everything that had happened since I was properly there?

[Coromandel]

Is the thumbnail an image of the last time you visited the site, or is it updated in real time? And if the latter, how does that affect cookies? I stay permanently signed in at BG, and whenever I come back click on What's New. But if the add-on had been gathering info about the site while I'd been away, does that mean that What's New might not show everything that had happened since I was properly there?

If a website stays in the top 25 most visited, the thumbnail seems to remain unchanged. For example my Oxford English Dictionary thumbnail still has yesterday's word of the day. Clicking on the thumbnail takes you to the current version of the site. There doesn't seem to be any problem with missing new content on BG, which is good news.

Where I've gone to part of a website (I'm thinking in this case of the search form on Old Maps) then selected one of the search results, compared different maps, etc., the page that's saved is the first one I went to, i.e. the blank form. That's very useful, as the "most visited" stats don't get cluttered with multiple bits of the same site, and you don't have to erase the previous search when you make a return visit.

There seem to be quite a few ways of customising FVD Speed Dial. You can at the touch of a button switch between the display of "most visited" sites and a list of your own favourite sites. I am already beginning to use it instead of my bookmarks list as it seems easier to pick the site when there are images as well as names than from a list of bookmarks. I don't know if it will work so well when I try to add more and more bookmarks, though. It's possible to create different groups, and to move thumbnails from one group to another, so if I put some thought into the most useful way to sort my bookmarks it could work really well.

[arthurk]

Thanks for checking that out. I don't feel as though I need a speed dial at present, but I'm always on the lookout for interesting Firefox add-ons, and this was something I'd wondered about trying some time.

Arthur