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March 06, 2007

Toolbar Tips and Tricks

Since Yahoo! Search is the most commonly used feature on the Yahoo! Toolbar, I thought it would be helpful to share a handful of search-based productivity hacks our toolbar team uses to help squeeze a little more juice out of the toolbar’s search box:

Yahoo! Toolbar for IE:

  • When using IE, press Alt-S to put the cursor directly into the Yahoo! Toolbar search box.
  • Once the cursor is in the search box, you can use the arrow keys to traverse the buttons and menus.
  • Right-click any button or menu to open its link automatically in a new window (instead of in the current browser window).
  • With Smart Tools  enabled (Toolbar Options under Settings menu), you can select text on the web page, by tabbing over the desired content.  A little Y! icon appears to help you easily search the web, look up in the dictionary and translate, in addition to other options as well.
  • Right-click on a web page to easily Bookmark it or send it to a friend.

Yahoo! Toolbar for Firefox:

  • Search Suggest: As you type in Yahoo! Toolbar, you will see suggestions of other common searches.
  • Yahoo! menu: Yahoo! Toolbar puts a Yahoo! menu in the Firefox browser that duplicates all the links from the Toolbar (enabled in Toolbar Options under Settings menu). This is primarily to provide access to people with special computing needs, so that they can get to all the links on their Yahoo! Toolbar should they not be able to use a mouse or other device to point on the toolbar. But it’s also an additional convenient way for anyone to get to their favorite links.

Yahoo! Toolbar, both IE and Firefox:

  • In newer versions, you can click and grab the little arrows near the right of the search box to drag and change the search box width.
  • All Search Shortcuts work from Yahoo! Toolbar search box (i.e. Local Weather: [city] weather)
  • Translate button: Under the Add/Edit buttons from the Settings menu, you can add a Translate button. This button will translate web pages to English, and has menu links to Babel Fish to translate words and bodies of text too.

Try ‘em out and let me know what you think in the comments.

Duke Fan
Yahoo! Toolbar Team

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Comments

Hi I recently upgraded from XP to Vista, and someone at Microsoft told be that toobars are notorious for slowing a system down. I have used the Yahoo toolbar from the time when i had my old Windows ME PC until recently. I figured the guy knew what he was talking about because he was sure smarter than me. I'm looking forward to the new Messenger for Vista as i use Yahoo Messenger almost exclusively. John Jesse

Posted by: John Jesse | March 19, 2007 09:45 PM

Smart Tools should bring you to the subject matters home page, not just other related search topics. Also, Smart Tools should provide a link to Yahoo! Maps so you can see where in the US or world the news is from. (ie. a news story from... Sisters, Ore. or Elmina, Ghana)

I mentioned this idea a few years ago in a comment.

Posted by: Robby from the Block | March 20, 2007 09:34 AM

I would like a Yahoo toolbar for SeaMonkey.

Posted by: David | March 29, 2007 08:35 PM

When will you do a toolbar for Safari?

Posted by: Ged | March 31, 2007 01:03 PM

David,

There is community developed toolbar at http://companion.mozdev.org that works on Seamonkey

OTOH, if we can convince Yahoo! to support Seamonkey, the mozdev version can be retired....

(With a little manual work, the official YTFF does work (mostly) in Seamonkey.)

Posted by: Brian Kennelly | April 3, 2007 07:36 AM

I'll really appritiate one thing and give yahoo credit, the one thing is that quickly delivering the result at once when the site index its really nice and counts the back links very fast.

thanks yahoo

Posted by: Ady | April 5, 2007 10:00 AM

Unfortunately, the MozDev Companion Toolbar for Yahoo! does not support the new Yahoo! Bookmarks, and will require major changes to add that support (see http://bugzilla.mozdev.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16419 for details). It would be nice if we could just use the current Yahoo! Toolbar for Firefox in SeaMonkey.

Posted by: Matt Seitz | April 5, 2007 01:12 PM

A Yahoo webrank must be added on the toolbar!

Posted by: Home Furnishings & Decor | May 17, 2007 10:32 AM

Instead of putting search history on the search box, can we have the "most popular" searches using the particular words ?

Posted by: Scented Soy Candles | May 17, 2007 10:34 AM

Kudos to Yahoo for the awesome toolbar!

Posted by: Sterling Silver CZ Jewelry | May 17, 2007 10:35 AM

I like the smart tools. It's very ergonomic

Posted by: Decorative Pillows & Throw Blankets | May 17, 2007 10:36 AM

I personally like the Yahoo! toolbar for FireFox. It makes searching so much easier. A must have for any browser.

Posted by: Justin Stanley | May 17, 2007 08:05 PM

Despite being a long time Google user, their search services and SERPs are becoming more cluttered and less relevant for my needs.

The introduction of their "Universal Search" was the straw that broke this camel's back. I've now switched everything over, and I'm thrilled with how well the Y! Toolbar is working for me.

Posted by: Eric Lander | May 18, 2007 04:51 AM

Y! Toolbar is by far the best toolbar. I don't use it at work, but at home it is the best by a long shot (over Google, Alexa, etc). Great work again guys!

Posted by: Trade Show Displays | May 30, 2007 02:09 PM

Although I like the Yahoo toolbar, I did find it annoyingly difficult to remove.

Posted by: Neil Simmons | June 15, 2007 02:24 AM

Hi, I used to have yahoo and google both in my browser. I eventually switched to just having Google. But now, I hear that I will not be able to use the old Google version 3 toolbar when I upgrade my PC to IE7/8. My newer PC came with Vista free upgrade, haven't switched it yet. I'm assuming I will not be allowed to use IE 6 with Vista. Oh well. Anyhow, when I make the browser transition, I'll be going back to Yahoo Toolbar because I HATE any version above the Google 3 toolbar. If I don't find any happyness with either toolbar at that point then I'll remove them all together and resort to a home page search. Oh bla!

Posted by: work and play | June 16, 2007 06:36 PM

Yahoo tool bar,I think it would nice to see a page rank tool included.

Posted by: Chris | June 17, 2007 12:01 AM

where is yahoo web page priority on Yahoo! Toll bar

Posted by: Search Engine Optimization | July 20, 2007 06:12 AM

Yes, Yahoo page rank tool would be a nice feature

Posted by: Perfume | July 24, 2007 12:07 PM