Weblog Wannabe
HotBot Toolbar
When I was surfing around, I came across HotBot Desktop Setup, which should just be named HotBot Toolbar because that’s what it is. A toolbar. It only works with Internet Explorer 5.0 or later and it has some features that Google Toolbar also has (search the web, block pop-ups, highlight as you search) and some other that Google Toolbar doesn’t have (search your local computer, subscribe to RSS news feeds, custom site search shortcuts). I was ready to ditch Google Toolbar in favour of HotBot Toolbar just for the “subscribe to RSS news feeds” feature, but then I saw the file size. It was 1.5 MB! I don’t know about you but I think 1.5 MB is too large for a toolbar. Google Toolbar file size is less than one-third of that. I don’t want to risk making IE take forever and a day to load just because of it (my default browser is Mozilla Firefox but I still use IE just as much due to Firefox’s frequent crashing episodes). Besides, I’m happy enough living without RSS news feeds. Well, as happy as I can be anyway, which, if you know me, doesn’t mean much. Heh. Anyway, if you use this toolbar or care enough to give it a try, I’d appreciate a review.
Quacks on HotBot Toolbar
Make sure it’s not adware or spyware. That could really mess with your computer.
Firefox has yet to crash on me. What I don’t like about it is that I can’t easily send a link to a page to anyone by email. I think that will be remedied before long.
I installed the Google toolbar in Internet Explorer 5.5 and it works just fine. If nothing else it blocks pop-ups. I almost never use IE, though. I love Mozilla and use it for almost everything.
There is a Google toolbar for Mozilla, too, available here. The nice thing about it is it can be minimized so you have more page space.
becarefull…I have an experience before, installing a icon or something like that for my email and a few weeks later, my credit card number got stolen
I installed it yesterday - you get “sponsered links” aka adverts within your rss feeds - no mention of that on the download page. I’m uninstalling it asap as the msn toolbar that I use does the popup blocking etc already.
Interesting how you’ve had trouble with firefox crashing, as I’ve yet to ever have any trouble with that. What kind of platform are you running it on?
I don’t think there will ever be something that replaces the Google Toolbar in IE has the top of the line toolbar to have.
Firefox works fine for me (W2K Pro). No crashes in a almost 2 months now. Have the Google toolbar mentioned by Harris installed since day 1; I would be completely lost without that one.
We are working on a download that is about 1.0 Mb. Don’t forget you get a client side indexer. This is really what about 1/2 the KB size is about.
We need to make money somehow right? We are doing so by displaying overt sponsored links. We are working on making the Web Result sponsored links take up less vertical space in the next dot release (within the month).
{This discussion is closed. Thanks to all who participated.}
