Sunday, August 24, 2008

Google Toolbar: Small, Irritaing Crap

Recently the following message appeared in Firefox:
What's new in your [Google] Toolbar

Search smarter with instant suggestions as you type
Bookmark frequently visited pages and access them from anywhere
Add buttons to the Toolbar to search your favorite sites — view available buttons
Share web pages via blog, email, or SMS
Actually, the latter was not so "new." In fact, the main reason I installed Google Toolbar was for the ease with which one may email snippets of Webpages. Highlight text/images on a Webpage, click a button in the Toolbar and bada bing email is created with that text/images.

But not any more.

For the past two weeks, when I attempt the above, I'm given an error message:



Temporary Error (502)



We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is currently experiencing errors. You won’t be able to use your account while these errors last, but don’t worry, your account data and messages are safe. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue.

Please try accessing your account again in a few minutes.


The galling thing is, this is no "temporary error" (#502 or not) resolved in a "few minutes", it's a semi-permanent error that has been going on for at least two weeks. And there is little information on this on Gmail's help system. All I found was this inconclusive posting.

Since there's not much else in the Google Toolbar that I find useful, I'm on the verge of uninstalling it.

Update 8/24/08:

Possible solution: Turn off the option to "Always use https", under "Browser connection." I just turned that off and the first time I tried the "send to" function, it worked.

Not a perfect workaround (as it means less secure browsing), but still a workaround.