Microsoft Releases New MSN Search Toolbar

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Microsoft today announced the immediate availability of their MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search.

The updated suite features "Windows Desktop Search" technology, a powerful, easy to use application that indexes users machines allowing them to search within seconds. Using one tool, people can search more than 200 file types on their PC including Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail files; Outlook Contacts or Calendar files; multimedia files; Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2003 and Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2003 files; MP3, GIF and JPEG files; Adobe or .PDF files. People can even search e-mail attachments.

In future developers will be able to create addins for the Toolbar suite taking advantage of the plug-in architecture third-party ifilters from http://addins.msn.com to extend the variety of file types that can be indexed and searched.

We exclusively revealed the existence of the MSN Toolbar Suite 2 and Tabbed browsing in Internet Explorer last month. Unfortunately due to a buggy implementation of tabs during Beta the MSN team have prosponed the release, according to an MSN spokesperson the functionality will be available in "the coming months".

For those on Windows XP 64bit it's no surprise that Microsoft have again decided to ditch support for the recently released operating system. Although the beta installed on x64 the final edition isn't supported. It's not clear whether Microsoft plans to support this in the future.

Download: MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search

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(1 reply) #1 alexp2_ad on 16 May 2005 - 10:11

So can I get this toolbar for Firefox then???

#1.1 sphbecker on 16 May 2005 - 13:37

You should be able to install it, but it would not integrate into FireFox. It should work just fine for Desktop and email searches. That is my guess; I have not tried it; let me know if it works.

#2 smashguy on 16 May 2005 - 10:11

Excellent!

(1 reply) #3 Lucida on 16 May 2005 - 10:19

looks interesting...if only for firefox

#3.1 sphbecker on 16 May 2005 - 13:37

It is more then just a browser ad-on. Go ahead and install it; its desktop and email searches should work just fine even if you don't use IE.

(1 reply) #4 thiXkull on 16 May 2005 - 10:22

what happened to the tabs..

could someone check that...

#4.1 creamhackered on 16 May 2005 - 10:24

Read the article buddy.

(1 reply) #5 ELeVeNtY on 16 May 2005 - 11:31

woot, you can make it search google for web, and have the desktop search and that still

put, http://www.google.com/search?q=$w
in the other box somewhere in options

#5.1 Mongrel on 16 May 2005 - 15:06

Thanks for the tip, I wouldn't have looked for that!

Nice graphical improvement overall, good job M$. Unfortunatley It does have to re-index your system after the update.

#6 nvizible on 16 May 2005 - 13:42

"prosponed the release"?

English, my dear fellows, English!

(3 replies) #7 averkiev on 16 May 2005 - 15:13

This release is very nice improvement over the Beta. But I found one annoying bug in this release. The MSN toolbar doesn't remember a customized positing in IE toolbar rows. I've to move it each time I start IE. Anyone else having this problem?

#7.1 sphbecker on 16 May 2005 - 18:06

I had that bug/issue with the Google toolbar as well. It may be a problem with Internet Explorer.

#7.2 y_notm on 16 May 2005 - 21:06

It is a bug in IE. Logging off/restarting the computer should clear up the issue

#7.3 averkiev on 17 May 2005 - 07:53

Found a fix to that problem. It's a bug in IE, but instead of logoff/reboot a special "reset" reg file should be applied. Here is more info:
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/ietips.htm#Odd

#8 NetRyder on 16 May 2005 - 18:14

This is an awesome release!
Turn on the "Prioritize Indexing" option and the index is updated instantly when you create, modify or delete a file. Lots of changes...I'm still playing with all the new stuff.

#9 rocks1985 on 16 May 2005 - 18:51

coolness

#10 lwebster_2000 on 16 May 2005 - 19:22

an excellent piece of work. much much better than the beta. one of the most useful tools available, and its free!

(3 replies) #11 AminoSC on 16 May 2005 - 19:24

This is awesome. I use Spotlight too and this blows it out of the water.

#11.1 sphbecker on 16 May 2005 - 21:31

Hope no Mac users saw that or we would have a flame war on our hands

I have not used Spotlight beyond walking by a Mac at the computer store and poking around with it, so I cannot fairly comment.

I do think MSN's search works great!

#11.2 AminoSC on 17 May 2005 - 04:56

Well I use Spotlight on my G4. They can't argue because this indexer is just SOOO much better. Only uses a total of 5 megs on my XP Pro machine. 9 megs when it's indexing.

#11.3 hoginhaze on 17 May 2005 - 14:40

Good for you. It uses about 500 megs on my machine to index all my personal files.

(1 reply) #12 kgraphik on 16 May 2005 - 20:52

When I used the beta, during indexing, when it would reach an icon (.ico) file it would take a long time (more than 5 minutes) to get through it and onto the next file. Can anyone confirm if this has been fixed with the update?

#12.1 ELeVeNtY on 17 May 2005 - 00:05

works fine for me

#13 Porp on 16 May 2005 - 21:44

I LOVE THIS.

#14 altermind on 17 May 2005 - 02:41

saved me alot of time.. glad they are outa beta now

#15 Demodave on 17 May 2005 - 03:04

Does this still eat up a bunch of memory while running in the background? The Beta seemed to. In fact, the desktop search applications I've tried seem to eat up quite a bit of memory to have the quick search results.

I know I should simply add memory....but I'm upgrading to an all new kick-ass system later this summer.

(1 reply) #16 puppy on 17 May 2005 - 03:31

Is it possible to set it so that it will only index when I tell it to do so? It doesn't seem like I can snooze indexing forever...

#16.1 sphbecker on 17 May 2005 - 14:18

It doesn't seem to have the option, however it automaticly "snoozes" whenever you are using your computer, and once it finishes indexing it only takes a second or two to update the index each time you modify a file.

#17 s0wi on 17 May 2005 - 15:09

it sure does take a long time to index 400,000 files.

#18 nvizible on 18 May 2005 - 12:56

The article still says "prosponed"?

Why can't someone take a few seconds to change that? This is, after all, the place where "unprofessional journalism" looks "professional", isn't it? This'd be a prime example of the "unprofessional" part!

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