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Firefox Sidebar + Google IG = Useful on any platform

July 15, 2006 – 1:39 pm

Whenever I’m on my Mac or Linux box, I miss the functionality of my Google Desktop Sidebar. I like being able to have a to do list, my Google calendar, and other various useful things right at my fingertips. I got to thinking about the Firefox Sidebar yesterday and how I could use that along with my Personalized Google page to make a sidebar I could use on any OS. Once I did it, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t done it sooner. I’m quite sure some enterprising person has already done this and it was posted on Lifehacker ages ago, but once again, its new to me. Anywho, here’s what I did.

1) If you don’t already have it, install Firefox.
2) Using Firefox, browse to http://www.google.com/ig
3) Line up all your Gadgets on the left, putting the ones you’ll use most at the top.
4) Once you’ve got everything arranged, bookmark that page and give it the name Google IG.
5) Open Bookmarks in the toolbar and select Manage Bookmarks.
6) Highlight the Google IG bookmark and click on the Properties button.
7) In the Properties dialog check the box next to “Load this bookmark in the sidebar” then click OK.
8) Double click the Google IG bookmark and it should load in the sidebar.
9) Close the Bookmarks Manager and enjoy. :)

To make your Google IG book more accessible, your can put it in your Bookmarks Toolbar.

Edit: Hey 50th post! Where’s the falling balloons and cupcakes?

Tags:


  1. 80 Responses to “Firefox Sidebar + Google IG = Useful on any platform”

  2. What a great idea! Simplicity itself.

    By Chris Sansbury on Jul 17, 2006

  3. That’s great! I love it!

    By Jonathan Riley on Jul 17, 2006

  4. you go girl!

    By Mattyv on Jul 17, 2006

  5. Great Idea Erica. Now I also have this side bar on my Firefox browser. Thanks for sharing the tip.

    Tushar

    By Tushar Joshi on Jul 18, 2006

  6. Can you pls tell me the name of the Firefox theme in use in the screenshot?

    By Sridhar on Jul 18, 2006

  7. great tip

    By ffoxer on Jul 18, 2006

  8. Shamefully they janked out the sidebar in the 3.0 development builds.
    No worries they’ll add it back before the 3.0 release somewhere in 2007, but as a nightly tester: no neat tricks for me :p

    By Joël Kuiper on Jul 18, 2006

  9. Great alternative for the sidebar. Now I can see digg boing slash gmail and gcal all at once. Muliplatform, less system load. Thanks.

    By Francis Siefken on Jul 18, 2006

  10. “Can you pls tell me the name of the Firefox theme in use in the screenshot?”

    it’s the default theme…

    By Robin Card on Jul 18, 2006

  11. Great job!

    By Eric on Jul 18, 2006

  12. Wow… Brilliant!

    By Ivan Minic on Jul 18, 2006

  13. Thanks for the wonderful tip, Erica. You rock!

    By jason on Jul 18, 2006

  14. good stuff, ran into this item via digg.

    *subscribes to blog*

    By charliedigital on Jul 18, 2006

  15. Excellent tip! Thanks for sharing.

    By Jason on Jul 18, 2006

  16. This also works great with pageflakes.com — Thanks!!!

    By dep on Jul 18, 2006

  17. @Sridhar:

    Thats the default theme for FireFox on Mac OSX.

    and great tip!

    By Dan on Jul 18, 2006

  18. Thanks Erica for taking the time to help us out.

    By Charles on Jul 18, 2006

  19. girl geeks are cool….’grats on gettin’ dugg!
    just realized you work at google…so you’re a genius too

    By Ryan on Jul 18, 2006

  20. Good idea. Its really helpful.
    Thanks,
    Thejesh

    By Thejesh GN on Jul 18, 2006

  21. This is good idea, I don’t know if I’ll use it much, but good nonetheless. Maybe the next step is to use Greasemonkey to change the layout of the Google page so that images and text aren’t cropped.

    By Yang on Jul 18, 2006

  22. excellent.

    By Pyrolyte on Jul 18, 2006

  23. Excellent tip! Very creative, Erica!

    By Michael P on Jul 18, 2006

  24. Very nice idea :)

    By Oliver on Jul 18, 2006

  25. Nice tip, Erica! Congrats on your 50th post, and got your post dugg. Has this been a software, I would write about it on SoftSift. Great work!

    By Keith on Jul 18, 2006

  26. That’s great! Good idea!

    By teddy on Jul 18, 2006

  27. You know I had seen that ‘open in sidebar’ feature before in the all-in-one sidebar extension. (It’s implemented quite simply as an ‘open this website in sidebar’ icon so it gives you another approach to getting to a setup like yours.)

    However, I didn’t see any application for such a feature. I would have had to resize the sidebar to see any normal website that I opened up, so where’s the feature in that, i thought. So I couldn’t figure out why I would want to use such a feature.

    But putting all the key content in the first column makes everything work together quite smoothly. done! works.

    Pretty interesting that such an obviously effective setup was overlooked by so many.
    A keen eye, that you have.
    Thanks.

    By Charles D. on Jul 18, 2006

  28. Brilliant Idea!
    Thanks and here are some virtual falling balloons and cupcakes *throw*

    KR morpheeze

    By morpheeze on Jul 18, 2006

  29. Thanks for the tip!

    Do you know of a way to reduce the size of the Google logo and search box? All of my gadgets fit nicely in the sidebar except the one I use most - Google search!

    Scott

    By Scott on Jul 18, 2006

  30. Thanks for the tip, Erica.

    I’m now using Linux full time at work and I missed my GDS gadgets.

    By Soyapi on Jul 18, 2006

  31. You rule. Thanks for the tip.

    By farmhead on Jul 18, 2006

  32. This is pretty cool. Ill try it the rest of the day to see how I like it.

    By Dustin on Jul 18, 2006

  33. Thanks for the IDEA!!!

    By ed on Jul 18, 2006

  34. Good idea, but wouldn’t it be better to use the Google IG Mobile version instead of the standard version?

    http://www.google.com/ig/mobile

    By rapture on Jul 18, 2006

  35. Your mouth is massive

    By Jimmy on Jul 18, 2006

  36. Google sometimes tries a bit to hard, thats what I believe

    By Markus on Jul 18, 2006

  37. Why couldn’t you use google desktop?? I thought it was comptable with Mac & Linux…

    Nick Schmidt

    By Nick Schmidt on Jul 18, 2006

  38. nice

    By jun on Jul 18, 2006

  39. nice little trick there!

    [Lowload.co.uk] - UK Dedicated Servers

    By Neil on Jul 18, 2006

  40. The same can be done with Opera.

    Expand the panel bar, (view -> toolbars -> panels), do the same thing with your gadgets on the left side, then drag the tab into the panels bar. then, click it to get this function.

    Note: Theres probably a nice opera widget to do this while looking nicer anyway.

    By drkN on Jul 18, 2006

  41. Thanks for the trick. Got it from Digg. I use the homepeage all the time and sometimes I just like a change. I’ll put it in the sidebar for a while and see how I like it.
    Oh Joy!

    By Lazlonger on Jul 18, 2006

  42. You can use this URL to point directly on the first widget of the page..

    http://www.google.com/ig#c_1

    By sam on Jul 18, 2006

  43. Thanks for the sharing this yet another google toy with us,
    used your trick to add it to Opera Panel (yep, I am an Opera 9 fan :)

    By PictureRipper on Jul 18, 2006

  44. Very cool! Thanks!

    By Jack Lund on Jul 18, 2006

  45. Love it. Simple, useful, delightful. So obvious, but only when you think of it. Thanks for thinking of it.

    By Donovan.UK on Jul 18, 2006

  46. This is a beautiful thing! Thanks!

    By JPow on Jul 18, 2006

  47. Thanks alotz buddy … great tips ;)

    ML

    By ML on Jul 18, 2006

  48. rather just have it open in a tab.

    By gus on Jul 18, 2006

  49. great idea, a lot more accesible
    saludos

    By Jaime on Jul 18, 2006

  50. great , great, great , great , great !!

    By Yakito on Jul 18, 2006

  51. Just a clarification :
    This can be done on Opera also.

    1) If you don’t already have it, install Opera.
    2) Using Opera, browse to http://www.google.com/ig
    3) Line up all your Gadgets on the left, putting the ones you’ll use most at the top.
    4) Press Ctrl + D and add it as a bookmark. While saving the bookmark make sure that the “Show in Panel” option is ticked.
    Screenshot
    5). That’s it! Now the panel will appear in your opera sidebar. Just click on the icon to open that panel.

    By Pallab De on Jul 18, 2006

  52. Cool! nice little tric

    By helmi on Jul 18, 2006

  53. ALSO remember to check “remember last opened site” IMPORTANT!!

    By Kruykaze on Jul 18, 2006

  54. Wow! Brilliant hack! Thank you so much.

    By jillian on Jul 18, 2006

  55. Nice and easy. Great tip and I am using it now.

    By Hansel on Jul 18, 2006

  56. Nice idea. I’ll definitly give this one a shot and see how it works out for me.

    By daedal on Jul 18, 2006

  57. nice and simple! Good stuff.

    I just subscribed too.

    By Hashim on Jul 18, 2006

  58. Cool idea

    By PHil on Jul 18, 2006

  59. Thanks Erica. I am putting this in my blog.

    By Prashant on Jul 19, 2006

  60. cool! Cross the OS barrier ;-)
    我可以完全转移到Linux下工作了,
    看来生活不缺少美和智慧,缺少的是发现美和智慧的眼睛.

    By 肥熊李 on Jul 19, 2006

  61. Cool!! YES!

    I can see a “To Do” in the screenshot… how can I get one?
    Thanks!

    By jason on Jul 19, 2006

  62. Great idea!

    By Jill on Jul 19, 2006

  63. Yang - I thought about trying my hand at a Greasemonkey script…maybe one day.

    Rapture - Mobile would be perfect if it displayed all your gadgets without having to click More.

    Jimmy - i kinda like it that way so danke for the compliment. :)

    Nick Schmidt - Point me to where I can download a Mac\Linux version of Google Desktop. ;)

    sam - nicely done!

    PictureRipper\drkN\Pallab De - Rock on with your Opera selves…I likesa my Firefox but woot if you can do this in Opera too.

    By EricaJoy on Jul 19, 2006

  64. Mine is still dividing into three columns. How can I fix that?

    By Jake on Jul 20, 2006

  65. Very nice hack !!!

    Thanks Erica !!!

    By Frank on Jul 20, 2006

  66. Awesome!
    I thought you’ve created a new plugin or something like this, but this is much better and simple ^_^ !!

    Thanks!

    By turo on Jul 22, 2006

  67. Avoid having to line stuff up:
    http://www.google.com/ig/mobile?output=pda&hl=en
    Will give you a single-column javascriptless optimized version of your page. Sure, it’s less functional, but you can reserve a bookmark to use your fully-functional page anyway. Meanwhile, you have your feeds, weather, email and calendar in one easy to get at place.

    By Fordi on Jul 25, 2006

  68. Thanks for the trick, I love it!

    Maybe the next step is to use Greasemonkey to change the layout of the Google page so that images and text aren’t cropped.

    I had the same idea, but unfortunately user scripts are not run on sidebar: greasemonkey bug #9651

    By sebdotv on Jul 28, 2006

  69. To Jason:

    You can get a ToDo by opening your Google Homepage, click on: Add Content, located in the upper right corner. A new tab/window will open. ToDo is located in the Tools section. Have fun looking!

    By kshery on Jul 29, 2006

  70. thanks erica!!!

    By john on Aug 1, 2006

  71. Nice Idea I ‘ll Check it Out..

    By Karthik on Aug 2, 2006

  72. Did this stop working today, or is it just me? As of today, my sidebar content is squeezed over to the left 1/3 of the window.

    I also notice that if you open google.com/ig in the main window, the column now automatically resizes to 1/3 of the window as you change the window size. I’m pretty sure that it used to be a fixed width column.

    Is this feature now broken?

    By Ian on Aug 4, 2006

  73. Hey Ian,

    I’m having the same problem….is this permanent for google/ig?

    queenkv

    By queenkv on Aug 4, 2006

  74. It’s not just you. My google is also doing the same thing. The sidebar content is squeezed over and I am not sure if it is a Firefox upgrade issue or if Google has changed the way the homepage is displayed

    By Sean Wilson on Aug 4, 2006

  75. Same problem for me! :(

    By Dave on Aug 7, 2006

  76. I am also having the problem of squeezed. Is this trick short lived? I wil have to go back to google desktop now for consolidated plugins.

    By Anand on Aug 7, 2006

  77. Heya folks,

    I’m having the same problems. Let me ask around and see what I can find out…I’ll keep you posted.

    -EJ

    By EricaJoy on Aug 7, 2006

  78. Hi,

    Thanks for the great tip Erica.
    I made a quick Firefox extension to fix the problem with the squeezed column - which I’m not sure if it was due to a Google change or to Firefox 1.5.0.6.

    Anyway, this extension brings our beloved IG-in-sidebar back and also features an improved layout.

    More information available at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3130/

    sebdotv

    By sebdotv on Aug 7, 2006

  79. Great the plugin works like a charm. Thanks Sebdotv!

    By Aannd on Aug 8, 2006

  80. Spoke too early, even though the plugin works for squeeze part but on clicking a link it tries to open the page on the sidebar itself :( for example digg. So I am still looking for the plain old setup.

    By Anand on Aug 8, 2006

  81. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3130/

    Updated! now links work perfectly!!

    Great!

    By Dave on Aug 9, 2006

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