Thursday, April 03, 2008

Google Toolbar 5 - No Firefox Support

I have always been a fan of Google's uniqueness. They astounded me in the late 90's with specific search engines for mac and linux. I found they were browser independent and really didn't cater to one operating system or another. I was happy then....

Later Firefox came out, and once again I could abandon the browsers default in the operating system, and run what I wanted, how I wanted, with whatever functionality I wanted. I was happy again....

I am not happy now....

I find it almost insulting that Google released what is probably the most flexible toolbar in the world, in a IE 6+ only format. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? What happened to the independence Google is known for? Where is my ability to run Firefox 2-3 on Ubuntu and still have all the functionality I need? Why am I finding less and less buttons from the Google gallery for earlier versions of the toolbar?

I wouldn't mind so much if I didn't find my own buttons gradually being taken out of the gallery. I like gadgets too, I use them on my iGoogle page almost entirely, but I run Ubuntu at home and Mac OS X at my work. I am not about to run WINE or Crossover just to run a browser so I can have the newer version of the toolbar.

I guess this means I will have to go back and create buttons for my own needs, and host them, again.

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