Please note that this post was migrated to my new blog platform. There may be bad formating, broken links, images, downloads and so on. If you need an item on this page, please contact me and I will do my best to get it from my backups.

The Yahoo!’s Toolbar.  The Google’s Toolbar.  The MSN Toolbar.  The “I’m a company, use our toolbar” Toolbar.

These were cool for about 15 minutes, as it allowed quick searches for the search engine you prefer to use.  They also were very nifty by having the ability to block PopUp windows.

My current viewpoint of these?  GET RID OF THEM!!! 

There is no need for them any longer.  Zip, nada, none.  All they do is use system resources (memory, delay your browse from opening faster, etc).  Yet adding to the confusion and messing up the User Experience. 

Now some may ask, “Wait, I want the popup blocker!!”  You already have a PopUp blocker built INTO Internet Explorer (once you install Service Pack 2).

Ok, what about quick searches you may ask?  Easy, install a Microsoft-now-distributed PowerToy called TweakUI (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx).  Once installed, open it and browse to Internet Explorer, Search.

Here are the built-in keyword shortcuts for searching.  Google isn’t installed by default, so I add it by clicking Create, enter the letter “g”, and use this ‘special’ URL:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%s

Notice the %s.  This is described in the Create window.  You can use this format for Yahoo, MSN (even though MSN is built-in).

Now, when I want to search Google, I open a browser (which you have to do anyhow for the Toolbar app if you had one), and in the URL type:

g Braves Baseball<press enter>

BAM, I now have Google results for Braves Baseball.  :)