[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia Toolbar

[Sascha Noyes]

On Thursday 15 January 2004 04:41 pm, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Thomas R. Koll wrote:
> > I think about 100% of the core-developers use Linux or MacOS as
> > operating system. I bet that you will find no one who programms
> > the toolbar for you ;-)
>
> Nonetheless, it is a fantastic idea.  I have done some research,
> but some months ago now, and apparently
>
> (a) it is not that hard to create a toolbar for MSIE, using Visual
> Basic even, and
>
> (b) there seems to be no open source toolbar project out there.

That is because of two reasons:
1. "toolbars" are spyware in most cases. Spyware targets people who don't know 
much about computers, which happens to be people that use mainly non-free 
software.

2. most toolbar features are already integrated into the main browsers: 
firebird (mozilla) and konqueror. In konqueror I can type "gg:wikipedia" in 
the addressbox and it brings up the google search results for the query 
"wikipedia". One can create new search aliases like these in the options. But 
more interrestingly, there already is a wikipedia search integrated into 
konqueror eg. "wp:bomis". Firebird also already has search plugins for 
wikipedia (in 13 languages) but you have to install them from 
http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html - which so far has failed when I 
tried to install them.

Another interresting thing to note is that wordIQ (one of the many number of 
people that use our content without releasing it as GFDL and claiming 
copyright) has a toolbar, that allegedly searches their wikipedia clone. 
Allegedly because it uses IE, and I have no way of finding out.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
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