8 Ways to Sunday

Someone has created a lightweight counterpart to the feature-rich Googlebar extension for Firefox and the Mozilla suite. Googlebar Lite strips out many of the rarely-used features of Googlebar in favor of a lean-and-mean approach to search.

I haven’t had a chance to try this yet, but I’m looking forward to giving it a shot. The full-fledged Googlebar seems to be a cause of frequent slow-downs and Firefox crashes on my home computer, though it runs just fine on my work PC (an Athlon-only problem?).

I’ll update this entry in a few days, after I’ve had a chance to see how the new toolbar works out.

(Props: The Unofficial Google Weblog)

Update

Posted 4/18/2004 @ 9:31 PM

As promised, here’s an update on my experiences with Googlebar Lite now that I’ve had a few days to put it through its paces.

I’m happy to report that GBL is fast and reliable, and has solved the stability problems that the original Googlebar seemed to be causing on my home system. I can once again happily browse with 20 or more tabs open in a single window experiencing browser-killing slowdowns. The extension offers all the features I really need from a Google toolbar and not one more. I like it so much that I’m now using it at work, where I never had a problem with the older Googlebar.

So there you have it: Googlebar Lite is a winner. Stop reading this and go get it now. You can always come back here and thank me later.