Bing Bar: A Browser Toolbar That's Actually Helpful

I've never been a huge fan of browser toolbars: I believe that the browser itself and the Web pages you view in its window should provide all the tools and links you need in order to go about your daily Web browsing, and toolbars can slow you down as well as confusing the top of the browser and reducing space for Web pages. But the Bing Bar released today, at version 7, is thin, fast, and useful.

Toolbars often hitch a ride when you're installing other software, but in a call this week with Bing's director, Stefan Weitz, the Microsoft exec told PCMag.com that "40 percent of toolbar users have intentionally installed them, because they like toolbars that are designed to make everyday 'stuff' easier and faster."

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The new Bing bar takes the toolbar back to what it's good at—bringing information to the forefront, with an emphasis on what types of tasks people were doing on the Web.

With that as its mission, the new toolbar gives one-button access to News, Maps, e-mail, and Facebook, along with offering a separate search box. A big part of the design is meant to expose Bing capabilities that users may not know about—Web-based gaming, stock quotes, and movie showtimes, among them. The Bing Bar also works with the search provider's rewards program, whereby users can earn points towards purchases by using Bing search, the toolbar, and allowing Microsoft to collect anonymous data on your search behavior.

Rather than redirecting your browser to a new Web page when you click one of the toobar's buttons, it drops down what Weitz called "wings" or panels populated with your map, e-mail messages, news headlines and blurbs, or whichever type of content you requested. Possibly the most powerful feature is the toolbar's Facebook integration: the wing for the dominant social network not only shows you your timeline, messages, and notifications, but even lets you Like or comment within the wing.

The new Bing Bar is only available for Internet Explorer 7 and later. To read more about the new Bing Bar, see Microsoft's blog post on the Bing Search blog (requires Windows Live ID). To install it for yourself, visit the Bing Toolbar download page.