Browser toolbars - how many?!

[quahappy]

It amazes me when I've cleaned up friends' PC's for one thing or another to see the amount of active browser toolbars. One had seven, obscuring main browser window a great deal! When I ask why the need, the general response is that it wasn't there before. In most cases, they've download and installed software and had "forgotten" to untick "Do you wish to install this toolbar?" which seems to be getting more common with a lot of software these days.

Some toolbars are useful but can be hidden and still remain "active" and run in the background. For example, security toolbars.

All I have in Firefox is the default URL field and Google toolbar. Others are hidden.

So if you've got a multitude of toolbars that's taking up more space than a mini cooper and you really don't need them, turn them off, and increase your main browser window view. If you really don't feel the need, but want to gain some extra view, pressing F11 switches your browser to full screen (F11 again switches back).

In Firefox, click on View tab (top left), Toolbars. Tick/untick where appropriate. In same section, if not required, untick Bookmarks toolbar. If you want to hide the tabbed options (File/Edit/View/History, etc) go to View, Toolbars > Menu Bar. To get this back, press the Alt key and retick Toolbars > Menu Bar.

In IE, select Tools, then Toolbars. Turn on/off where applicable.

Further enhancements is to "Unlock" your PC's taskbar so it only appears when you hover mouse at bottom of screen. This in turn increases broswer window further - providing it's at maximum width and height (fit to screen). If using Windows 7, right-click anywhere in blank portion of Taskbar then select Properties. Tick Auto-hide the Taskbar, then on Apply.

Anyone got further tips to keep browser window "clutter free"?

[Layzie Bone]

I have 0

Toolbars are one of my biggest computer pet peeves, they are all useless, they slow down your browser, your PC, many of them load adware on to PC's and are usually snuck in a wide variety of "free" software.

Pardon my french here, I hate toolbars and aint a damn thing that will make me change my mind. I hate em, I hate them, I hate them...no sir I do not like green eggs and ham....or the yazoo toolbar or whatever...

When I clean PC's I kill all of them, I've seen folks with 8 toolbars, it filled half the screen and took 7 minutes to load a webpage, it is horrific. I feel that if one must use a toolbar then they should find a browser that fits their needs. If I want to search for something I don't need ask jeeves or the Google toolbar when I can simply type the query in the address bar itself, or just go to http://www.google.com, I'm not the fastest typist in the world, but 1.5 seconds more isn't going to hurt me. It's simply unneeded software, and the benefits are way overrated.

Likewise people are entitled to do what they wish, including loading garbage software on their PC's...


When it comes to tips...

If you have IE or firefox, there are two programs I could reccomend, particularly for those pesky toolbars that just wont go away. You can use HijackThis, or Sysinternals Autoruns, I prefer Autoruns, very powerful tool if you know what you're doing, you can not only disable the toolbar, but the BHO's, Extensions, or any other nonsense it loads with IE. Autoruns will also remove startup items...from everwhere in the registry, unless you have some rootkit onyour machine you can probably keep it from starting up, but be careful though, the wrong move you can keep your machine from booting

Because Autoruns is a Microsoft program it will not disable add-ons for other browsers, so if you use firefox or chrome or whatever, you'll need something like HijackThis, or something that supports your browser...

There's no cure for keeping toolbars from getting installed, simply read what's on the screen when you install software, over the internet or even something you purchase on CD, they sneak them in, they get pennies on the dollar every time they get someone to install one of these things.

[moongirl]

None here!

[battye]

Not so much a problem now On Mac, but when I used to install a lot of Windows applications I was always careful not to leave the toolbar box ticked.

I think the only toolbar I've ever used was the Google toolbar, that was back in 2002 or 2003 when it was brand new and actually useful. I don't think IE4 or IE5 or whatever I was using then had a search bar inbuilt, and on 56k it certainly saved time to use the toolbar. It even showed the page rank of the page you were on... the Google toolbar was quite good now that I think back

[Layzie Bone]

back in the days of IE4 and 5 that may have been a slightly different story, but i stand on my opinion, or maybe sit, lay, whatever, today they pose no purpose...google might have been more useful and caused less issues (if any) with browsers back in the day...

[quahappy]

I like the Google Page Rank as well. Took nearly 2 years before it showed anything for my website. now the bar is nearly half full.

[Layzie Bone]

well back in the day when i still had a website (technically i do, but I no longer do jack) the highest rank I ever got was 130,000 which I thought was pretty good...I couldn't get anyone to really stay, less than 5 active members really, oh well those were the days...eh not really...

[nesman]

Years ago, I ran with the Google toolbar in IE. I even installed it in Firefox, out of habit. When I realized that I only actually wanted the searchbox, the toolbar was gone.

[Layzie Bone]

You know I never thought of finding out if you can install toolbars in chrome or not, not that I care, we all know my opinion about toolbars...

I might have briefly used Google toolbar at some point, but it didn't last long, since I really don't remember having one, might have been 5 years ago, I did a lot of crazy ***** in college, experiment with drugs and alcohol and install toolbars