My World… by Joker

If you have not discovered Google Toolbar version 4 yet with the custom buttons feature, you’re missing out on a lot of cool searching and fast access to information online. I posted about this briefly on April 1st and it was not an April’s fool post

I am creating this page exclusively for the Toolbar Buttons and will update it when necessary with new information and cool button links including resources for button creation. This toolbar beta version 4 will work in IE6. I’m sure Google will be working on a firefox version in the future. If you don’t have it installed yet, you can get it here:

You can instantly add custom buttons from sites you visit and also create a drop down RSS feed from the button if available making it easy to search that site directly from the toolbar without going there first. You can also read the feed at anytime from the toolbar since it automatically updates. Here’s an example where I created an ESPN baseball index button with the latest MLB news stories feed. You can click on the button to add it to your toolbar now:

I also wanted to show you how the feed looks like when you click on the down arrow once the button is installed:

Now the button will allow you to search those sites directly from the toolbar. In our ESPN mlb index button example, enter a name or keyword into the search box on your toolbar, click on the ESPN button, and it will take you directly to search results at the ESPN MLB baseball index section. This saves time every time you search and lets you check the latest baseball stories from the drop down arrow. 

There’s a very cool site with lots of help on how to create custom buttons:  make sure you check out the bottom of the page where they have developer tips.

You can also visit the Google Toolbar buttons gallery: http://www.google.com/tools/toolbar/buttons/gallery for a large selection of cool buttons. if you have any questions, leave a comment below.