MSN Releases New Version of Toolbar
July 1, 2008 by Jason Bean
Filed under Computers
I’ll be honest, one of the toolbars I don’t use or have installed even is the MSN toolbar. I never did like the MSN interface back when I had MSN as my ISP on dial-up. Hated their browser navigation interface. I’d always make the connection with their program and then use the default Internet Explorer browser.
MSN has released an updated version of their toolbar which does look pretty sharp compared to others. It’s a very Vista and Office 2007 looking control bar.
Some of the features include items that are standard and what you would expect. Things like:
- News
- Entertainment
- Sports
- Money
- Shopping
- etc.
I do like the way the toolbar just displays a window of the information for each section instead of immediately changing the page you’re on. That’s helpful, kind of reminds me of another way the sidebar could be used that’s in browsers today. Does anyone use that really?
The MSN Toolbar is cool and flashy looking, but unless you’re an avid MSN fan, I don’t think most people will be keeping it.
The toolbar takes up a lot of screen space, and the glowing search button and bar can be distracting a bit. I’m not that big of a fan of MSN sites, and I can do most of the Live Search features on my own Live Toolbar.
I do like how little mini-boxes appear with headlines and pics, and separated by subcategories. I really LOVE the weather application. It’s the only thing I find worth keeping. The weather app. is really slick looking and cool. As if there weren’t enough of these :)
I wonder when Live Toolbar will get an update.