Bye, Bye, Browser Bar

Posted on August 17, 2011 by David Whelan

Posted in Add-on, Firefox, Internet Explorer | Tagged highlighting, search, utility

The Web browser toolbar was for many years the way that expert researchers improved their Web browser. It provided nice added features (term jumping, highlighting) and saved search history. Google had one, Yahoo! had one, in fact nearly everyone who could do so created one. Some were little more than advertisements. Then the Web browser changed, as search began to be built in to the Web browser itself, usually as a box beside the location bar (where you type in http://www….). Then it shifted again. Why have two boxes, when you can search from the location bar? Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Internet Explorer all support that now.

It was unsurprising, then, to see that Google will no longer be updating its Google Toolbar for Mozilla Firefox. You can still get it for Firefox or for Microsoft Internet Explorer. As with Realtime search, Google is paring down its offerings. Firefox is a superb browser and I expect all of the functionality the Google Toolbar provides is available by select Firefox extensions.

Searching Social Media with Topsy

Posted on August 12, 2011 by David Whelan

Posted in Bookmarklet, Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, RSS, Safari, Search, Social media | Tagged business intelligence, competitive intelligence, real-time

Finding social media messages is a challenge. This seems to be particularly true when sifting through the information overload that is Twitter, whose own search engine seems perpetually unable to return relevant results. It was ameliorated by Google and other realtime search, which would let you reach back beyond the last week or two and see relevant messages in the past. As each of these realtime search tools goes offline, however, it becomes harder to dig into Twitter’s past.

The New York Times’ Gadgetwise blog has a good suggestion in Topsy. I mentioned Topsy briefly a few months ago but it is worth taking another look at this tool. Even forgetting the fact that it is a much stronger search engine than Twitter’s own, it has some other features that make it a good draw.

Researchers will like its advanced search template. You can specifically include or exclude words, and you can search for posts by a particular user or over a particular time frame.

One feature I like is that Topsy recognizes Twitter messages that link to other content. If you are looking for messages that link to content posted on www.fictionaldomain.com, you can restrict the search to looking just at messages that link to that site.

Topsy also has an Experts search option. If you are looking for an individual who is knowledgeable on a particular topic, you can search the experts section and it will return Twitter accounts that are frequently cited by other Twitter accounts for that topic.

It’s not exactly a citation index but it can give you some starting points if you are trying to identify expertise. It is also not necessarily current. The expert profiles are drawn from Twitter’s information, and you may want to visit a Twitter account profile to verify that the information is current.

Last but not least, Topsy supports RSS feeds for specific topics and experts.

Internet Explorer 9 Improved for Keyboard Researchers

Posted on June 8, 2011 by David Whelan

Posted in Internet Explorer, Web Browser | Tagged hotkeys, shortcuts

Windows 7 users can upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer and those of you who rely on your keyboard may want to do so. There are some standard conventions for Web browsers and versions previous to IE9 have not always implemented them the same way as Firefox and Chrome. Or any other Web browser.

My biggest pet peeve was getting to the location bar. In IE8, you can click into the location bar to type a Web address. You can also send a search query to your default search by typing a question mark followed by your query: ? where’s waldo. But if you hit the key combination of CTRL L, you would not place the cursor in the location bar. Instead, Internet Explorer would open a small dialogue box. You could then type in the URL or search. But since it took you off your Web browser, you could not tab across to the search box or to other elements of your browser. The dialog box was also a lot smaller, so you couldn’t always take advantage of your URL history, which popped up to remind you where you had visited in the past.

IE9 uses many of the other standard key combinations. Now you can use these no matter which browser you use:

CTRL L: get to the location bar. In IE, add a question mark for a search. In Firefox and Chrome, just type the search and it will automatically treat is a a search.
CTRL T: open a new tab
CTRL TAB: move between tabs
CTRL D: create a bookmark or favorite
CTRL F4: close a tab

There are many other hotkeys you can use in your Web browser of choice, but I am looking forward to being able to move more seamlessly between browsers. Of course, I will have to wait until we upgrade from Windows XP!

Research Add-ons Chart for Lawyers Using IE, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari

Posted on April 15, 2011 by David Whelan

Posted in Add-on, Business Information, Canada, Case Law, Evernote, Firefox, Google, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, Search, U.K., U.S. | Tagged compatibility, cross-browser, enhancements

This page was inspired by a recent conference presentation I saw that focused, like much of this blog, on extensions and tweaks for Mozilla’s Firefox or Google’s Chrome Web browsers. The legal profession is predominantly using the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser, however, probably at even greater levels than the general population. It is sometimes hard to determine what add-ons or extensions work for Microsoft Internet Explorer, because there is no comprehensive central marketplace for available resources.

Here is a chart with a list of free extensions that can help your online research and the browsers for which they are available. It’s not comprehensive, but it has a number of resources that are available to 3 or more browsers.

I have made a selection for each category and browser but there may be other options. Keep in mind that the add-on may be for a particular version of the Web browser or require a particular operating system, so they may not install for the version you are running. You can also go directly to sites like IEAddons.com for Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Add On site, Google’s Web Store (or the old extension site), Safari Addons, and the Userscripts.org site to find tweaks for all major Web browsers.

Feel free to add your own favorite research-related extensions or add-ons in the comments!

Click the icon that matches YOUR browser to go directly to an available extension. If the icon is grayed out, then I didn’t provide a link.
Hold your mouse pointer over the icon before you click it. I have added a tool tip for each icon to try to help you before you click away.

Access Internet Explorer-designed Sites without Internet Explorer
Block Ads
Bookmark Synchronization
Case Law Citation Locator
Citation Management with Zotero (free)
Diigo Web Highlighter and Research Manager [FLI post on Diigo]
Evernote Web Clipper [FLI post on Evernote]
Google Search Result Term Jumping / Highlighting
Google Scholar Star Pagination for Cases [FLI post on pagination]
Greplin Personal Cloud Search [FLI post on Greplin]
Instapaper Deferred Reading
Readability
Surf Canyon Personalized Search Results

Finding Legal Information

Finding and Managing Legal Information on the Internet

Category Archives: Internet Explorer

Bye, Bye, Browser Bar

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