Toolbar Blog Posts

Over the past several months, Yahoo! has been rolling out Search Suggestions to users across Firefox browsers (aka "chrome search" for the geeks among us), Yahoo! Toolbar for Firefox and, most recently, Yahoo.com.

And today, we're expanding Search Suggestions to Yahoo! Toolbar for Internet Explorer. Now, all new downloads include the same ease of use and quick search experience right from the Y! Toolbar for IE.

Sensing a pattern? We really believe that Search Suggestions improves your search experience. By automatically giving you suggestions based on what you've typed (as you're typing), you can get to what you're looking for faster.

We're driving to push it out to all your favorite search boxes. So, if you haven't tried it yet, give it a go and let us know how it's working for you in the comments below. And, as always, if you'd like to bypass the suggestions altogether, you can easily turn it off in Yahoo! Toolbar by going to the menu below the suggestions or in "Toolbar Options" under Settings.

Hua Ai
Product Manager, Yahoo! Toolbar

No idea is a bad idea. Ok, I don't believe that either. But if you think you've got a good one for Yahoo! Toolbar, please share it on our new Toolbar Suggestion Board.

You can also visit the forum to read and rate other people's suggestions. The more votes a suggestion receives, the more likely it'll attract our attention. And who knows, you may even bump into real folks from the Toolbar team who will chat with you about the suggestions.

So, if you'd like to participate and help make Yahoo! Toolbar better, please join our party and give us your feedback.

Thanks!

/duke

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

Here on the Yahoo! Toolbar team, we've been playing with Yahoo! Live Search which you may have seen providing the search suggestions on AlltheWeb or in Firefox 2.0. We liked it so much, we put it into the search box in the latest version of Yahoo! Toolbar for Firefox for the US, Germany, UK and Korea.

Now whenever you type in the Toolbar search box you will see the most popular searches that are relevant to what you've typed. Personally, I particularly like the fact that Live Search also suggests terms that don't start with what you've typed. For example, suggestions for "fire" also include "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."

While we were in the neighborhood, we made a few more improvements to the search box. In addition to making suggestions, it now shows matching items from your previous searches, and expands as you type so you can see what you've typed when you do one of those extra long queries.

Last but not least, now that Firefox 2.0 is imminent, we've enabled support in our most recent Toolbars. The Mozilla team has made a lot of improvements in the recent beta 2 release, so to all you Firefox 2.0 users out there, please make sure you upgrade to the latest version so you'll have the best experience.

Click here to download Yahoo! Toolbar 1.3 for Firefox, and please let us know what you think.

Jon Granrose
Product Manager, Toolbar