How to find everything about toolbars by searching

2006-08-20 | By: A. Lundgren | Comment on this article

In this article we are going to show you a couple of ways to find toolbars with the functionality that you want. We'll also learn what to search for when you want to see if the toolbar is safe to use or not. All search terms used in this article should work in most search engines. If you can't get them to work you could try one of these search engines: Google, Yahoo! search or MSN search.

We'll also look at some ways on how to get your question answered. There are a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) available in the menu to the right. You'll be able to get some of your question answered there. You are also able to ask a question there if you can't find the answer through searching.

The different kind of toolbars

The first thing we'll take a look at is finding a toolbar that suits your needs. There are several different toolbars available, several hundred actually. The most common ones are probably search toolbars which you use to search the internet from any webpage in the world.

There are also several "webpage specific" toolbars that are used to increase the functionality for a specific webpage. That could be a toolbar that let you upload pictures, view the latest news, view the latest auction, lookup information from the webpage and a lot more.

There are also some toolbars that are used to change the looks of a webpage, very useful when u create your own webpage. They are called "web developer toolbar".

And there are some that will show you ads. This is the kind we want to avoid. There are a lot of toolbars that has been developed for bad purposes, such as showing ads or gathering information about your surfing habits. But it's quite easy to avoid those kinds of toolbars. Read the part "Is the toolbar safe?" a bit further down on this webpage.

Search toolbars

If you want to find a toolbar that you are going to use mainly to search with, you should use one from the search engine that you are using.

So begin by looking at your search engine homepage if they have got a toolbar. If you don't find any information about it you could search like this:

toolbar site:your-search-engine.com

That search term will search for the word toolbar on the site your-search-engine.com which you should change to the search engine that you are using.

If you found a toolbar you should look at what functions, other then searching, it offers. It may be hard to know what functions you should demand so it could help to compare the toolbar to other toolbars. Here is a comparison between three search toolbars.

You could also search for other toolbars to see if anyone of them offers a function that you would like. Some toolbars got more functions then they write about on the toolbar webpage. You could use a search engine to find if the toolbar got the function:

function site:toolbar-page.com

In the search term above you could write the function that you want to look up and the address to the toolbar. For example: "pop-up blocker site:toolbar.yahoo.com".

Using only the two very simple methods above should be enough to find the search toolbar that suits your needs the best.

Webpage specific toolbars

The amount of different toolbars available grows every day, and now days there are a lot of webpage's that got their own toolbars. So if there are any webpage that you are using on a daily basis you should see if they got a toolbar. It could save you a lot of time.

The easiest way to do so is using the same method as above:

toolbar site:the-site.com

You should change "the-site.com" to the address of the site you want to search.

Some sites contain other articles about toolbars and could present you with a lot of different webpage's. You could narrow down the search by adding "download" to your search terms:

download toolbar site:the-site.com

If you don't find any toolbar for that site there could be a toolbar button to use on another toolbar. You could search for it using this search term:

the-site toolbar button

If you want to use a specific toolbar you could do the search above and include a site term at the end, like this for example:

the-site toolbar button site:live.com

The search term above will let you search for a toolbar button for "the-site" on the Windows live site.

Web developer toolbars

There are a couple of toolbars available for those who create their own webpage's. They can be really useful and you should definitely consider getting one if you do develop your own webpage's.

There are a couple of developer toolbars available for Internet Explorer but you should change to Mozilla Firefox if you want to develop webpage's. There are plenty of extra tools available to Mozilla Firefox.

When you want to find a toolbar to help you with webpage development you could search for:

web developer toolbar

You should then get a couple of webpage's that provides you with a free developer toolbar. If you are using Firefox you should consider using "Web developer toolbar" as it's a really competent tool.

You could also do a search for:

webmaster toolbar

That search will help you find a toolbar that is for the webmaster more than the developer. It will contain functions useful for SEO, Search Engine Optimization, that will help you rank high in Search engines.

Is the toolbar safe?

It's really important that you check the toolbar before you install it. Toolbar can quite often contain spyware, viruses and other harmful functions. You shouldn't have to worry about toolbar from the large companies such as Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, AOL and other really large companies. It's the smaller companies you should be worried about.

There are a couple of really easy ways to determine witch toolbars are good for you and which are not. The first thing you should do is a search on the toolbar name. We'll use "anyevilbar" as an example (there aren't any toolbar called "anyevilbar toolbar"). So let's say that you find the anyevilbar toolbar during a search. It really suits your needs and got all the functions you could ever have a use for.

Since you don't know anything about the toolbar or the company that created the toolbar you should really do a search to see that the toolbar is safe to use. The first thing you should search for is the toolbar's name. In this case:

Anyevilbar

You should get a list of webpage's that contain "anyevilbar". If you look through the first ten webpage's in that result list and find any webpage that claims that the toolbar is dangerous or if there are many webpage's that describe on how you should do to remove it. Then you should be worried and stay away from the toolbar.

If you can't find any webpage's that claims that the toolbar is dangerous but still aren't completely certain that the toolbar is safe you could do the following search:

Anyevilbar spyware

And once again go through the first ten webpage's in the result list. If there are webpage's that claims your toolbar to be spyware: Stay away from it. It's better to be safe than sorry.