Thursday, April 06, 2006

Bugs in Google Toolbar v2.0 beta for Firefox?

Earlier today, I installed the Google Toolbar v2.0 beta update for Firefox. I've noticed a couple of problems since installing it:

Alt+g

The Alt+g keyboard shortcut to focus the search field on the toolbar no longer works. I can see why this was missed during testing because for most Firefox users, Alt+g opens the Go menu. However, in my copy of Firefox, I have the Go menu disabled, which I did for the specific purpose of allowing Alt+g to work with the Google toolbar instead (as it does in the Internet Explorer version of the Google toolbar)!

I reported this issue to Google via their contact form for the Toolbar, so hopefully they'll fix it in a future update.

Update 4/7/2006 8:30pm: I got a response back from the Google team via email. They let me know that Alt+s works in Firefox to focus the search field. I hadn't previously been aware of this; it sounds good to me, since Alt+s is even easier to reach on the keyboard with my left hand than Alt+g! Now I'll just have to train myself to use it...

It is kind of unfortunate that the Firefox and IE versions of the Toolbar use different keyboard shortcuts; I wonder if IE could be made to use Alt+s as well for consistency.

Publishing Posts on Blogger

In my previous blog post that I made earlier today after installing the Toolbar update, the post wouldn't publish properly; when I clicked the Publish button, the browser just got stuck in a loop trying to publish the post; the post showed up in my list of posts in the Blogger "control panel", but it didn't actually show up in the blog itself.

I ended up opening up IE instead and publishing the post from there, and it worked with no problem.

I'm not sure yet whether the Google Toolbar update is somehow to blame for this problem. We'll see how publishing this post goes!

Update: Publishing this post from Firefox with the new Google Toolbar installed worked with no problem. Looks like maybe it was just a temporary issue with the Blogger site itself earlier today, as I haven't made any other changes on my machine since then.

6 comments:

  1. I think you mean "Firefox", not "Firebox".

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  2. Indeed I did. Fixed, thanks!

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  3. Another bug: There's now an option to replace the built-in searchbox and hide the toolbar. If you choose this option, and click the little |G| button next to it, it will show a menu with Google's search options. However, I miss the 'Options' option and need to first enable the whole toolbar before I can get to access window.

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  4. DXL, one alternative way to get at the Options dialog for the toolbar is to click Tools menu, Extensions; then on the Extensions dialog that appears, select the Google Toolbar extension and click the Options button.

    I agree that it would be nice if there was an "Options" menu pick on the "G" button itself, though!

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  5. Are there any special actions needed to get "Send with Gmail" to work, other than enabling it under Options? Doesn't work at all for me.

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  6. Mike, I'm not sure about that. The only additional information I was able to find about that feature is on this Toolbar help page. I only have the v2 Toolbar installed on my work machine currently, and I won't be back at work until Monday, so I can't test it myself at the moment!

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