All That IE Can Be

LittleBigBar
Granted, the name doesn’t seem too catchy, but what’s in a name when the add-on delivers where it matters? LittleBigBar doesn’t boast too many features; “

it’s about as basic as they can come. You can search from a rather vast number of sites, and you can even go the point of including www.eBay.com, www.eBay.ca, and even www.eBay.co.uk. The search history can save up to the last 20 entries; you can also manually customise the history if you wish so. Another feature we found to be rather neat is the “One Level Up” button which lets you go a few levels behind in the Web site you are currently browsing. For example, if you are browsing http://www.forums. com/forums/search.php then by using the “One Level Up” function, you can move back to http://www.forums.com/forums and http:// www.forums.com, even if you hadn’t gone to those pages before. There are still a few goodies in this add-on, but we’ll let you find them out for yourself.

Video Download by Vloader
Not what the title indicates, Video Download is not your generic download manager for videos. How often have you wished to grab files from sites like YouTube, Google Video, etc.,

which don’t provide you with the option to save the video files to your PC? Sure, you can hunt them down by going into your Temporary Internet Files, but using the Video Download add-on for IE7 is more practical, since it lets you instantly save these videos to your hard drive. The downloaded video files will turn out to be .flv video files, from which you can convert to AVI using most converter software.

IE Spell
You know you need one of these! The spell check function has become the bread and butter of apps like Microsoft Office, and we guarantee there was a time when you wished it would be implemented even in browsers.

IE Spell fulfils this exact wish by providing you with a spell check for your Web mail, blogs, diaries, forms-you name it. If it can be typed, it can be spell-checked. This is one of the most useful add-ons for those who write a lot of content on the Web. No need to type your stuff in a Word document; spell check and then copy paste to your browser. You can do it on-the-fly with IE Spell!

IOSurf
Chat addicts will instantly fall in love with IOSurf, an add-on that takes online communication to its limits…literally! IOSurf allows multiple users viewing the same Web page to chat with each other (provided all users have IOSurf installed, of course). You can group-chat with all users viewing the Web page or select a specific user and chat with him/her.

What’s more, IOSurf doesn’t compromise on security: all messages are sent using SSL (Secure Shell Layer) encryption to keep them safe from prying eyes.

C No Evil Toolbar
C No Evil Toolbar stands up to its name rather cleverly. The “Evil” here pertains to the annoying advertisements and banners you often see on Web pages.While you would normally curse at the very sight of banners, C No Evil will keep your curses, expletives and umm… karma in check by replacing the advertisements with your own personalised images of just about anyone and anything as long as it’s an image or a gif animation. The strange thing is that after installing this add-on, you will be looking at sites heavily filled with ads in a more positive light just because you will be showered with pictures of your favourite actress in the place of those pesky banners!

Error Buddy
How much do you hate 404 error pages? With Error Buddy, you can get rid of those bland messages and replace them with Error Buddy pages which give you news, the joke of the day, and so on, while, of course, informing you that the site you were trying to visit is down. What’s more, every time you visit an invalid URL and end up at Error Buddy’s page, you will actually be contributing for charity foundations-talk about good deeds for bad links! A note of warning though-intentionally going to the dead link too many times can get you banned from www.errorbuddy.com.

Useful Stuff 123 Toolbar
You will often find Useful Stuff Toolbar almost as handy as a Swiss Army Knife. This add-on is a package containing a bunch of features,

including a history and cache cleaner, POP3 and Yahoo! mail checker, and search bars for several search engines, in addition to other nifty features like weather and time for your area. The Useful Stuff 123 toolbar lives up to its name, this should definitely be one of the first add-ons you should install as soon as you get your hands on IE7.

Notefish
Serious Internet researchers will find themselves heavily dependent on Notefish, a nifty tool for researching on the big bad Internet. Notefish allows you to save snippets of Web pages with something as simple as a drag, select and “copy to”.

In a way, this resembles cutting off snippets from newspapers or magazines and saving them in a separate project file. Images, text, entire HTML pages or even portions of them-if you can select it, you can snip it and save it to a project file. You can access your profile page to manage your projects at any time using the icon in the system tray, and even share your projects with your co-workers or friends over the Internet.

WordClick
Searching could never be easier when you have WordClick at your disposal, an add-on that allows you to search for just about any word you see in your browser with something as simple as a mouse click.

And no, this doesn’t require you to remember any complicated six-key shortcuts, all you need to trigger the Google search is to keep your mouse over the word and simply click on it when it turns into a hyperlink. WordClick doesn’t restrict searches just to Google-you have the option to search on Google, search Amazon when you [Alt]-click, or search on eBay when you double click. While only three shortcuts are available, you also have the option to change the shortcut assignments to search on MSN and Frazoo in addition to the search engines mentioned above.

QDictionary
As simple as it sounds, QDictionary allows you to select any word when you are browsing and look it up in a dictionary. There are no fancy features to go with QDictionary-who would really need them? QDictionary adds itself in the right-click menu of Internet Explorer 7, so all you would need to look up a word is to select it, right-click and select “Look up” or “Thesaurus”. Note that this program actually depends on the Web site www.m-w.com, so you’ll need to be connected to the Internet before looking anything up.

Trexy Toolbar
Yet one more tool for researchers on the Web. Trexy Toolbar keeps track of all your search trails, making sure you won’t forget your search phrases when you need them. All you need to have to do is select a search engine in Trexy Toolbar from which you will be searching, and get then continue searching normally. Trexy Toolbar will silently log all the links you clicked and sites you visited since your first search. When you need it, you can trail your search links backwards all the way to when you had initiated your search.

Internet Explorer AutoRefresher 1.0
Small, compact and powerful, AutoRefresher for Internet Explorer 7 is one of the most useful add-ons in the list. With AutoRefresher at your command, you will never need to pound the [F5] key to refresh your page; just relax while AutoRefresher does the job for you in an interval specified in seconds. What’s more, you can even have different time intervals for different windows and tabs. The AutoRefresher can be quite useful when you need to constantly check certain sites for news (or cricket scores) or when you are awaiting replies on forums.

Wiki-Toolbar for IE7
Everyone is familiar with Wikipedia, especially researchers. In fact, most of us go directly to Wikipedia to look for the information we want instead of search engines like Yahoo! or Google. The Internet is plastered with toolbars for just about search engine out there, and the plague has just been spread even to good ol’ Wikipedia. The Wiki-toolbar allows you to enter your search for anything on the Wikipedia site in any of the site languages specified. That’s not all this toolbar includes, the Wikipedia toolbar also acts as a general purpose toolbar complete with pop-up blocker, mail checker, Google search, and more.

MySpace Toolbar for IE7
MySpace Toolbar, as you must have guessed, gives you access to shortcuts for the most common actions on www.myspace.com, one of the biggest social communities on the Internet. The MySpace Toolbar also acts as a general toolbar for everyday operations-e-mail notifications, weather updates and so on. Only those who frequent MySpace will find this toolbar useful-it provides plenty of hot links on the popular Web site, including the infamous love note maker, wavy and glitter text generators, and common features like search, favourites, browse, blogs, forums, etc. It’s a must-have for any MySpace addict!

IMacros Freeware Edition Toolbar
Macros are extremely useful functions in any application. They can automate practically any of your tasks, and now macros extend their reach to even Internet Explorer. No need to check the same sites every time you open your browser, no need to type in your username and password every time you want to login to your favourite Web site.

Not when you have IMacros at your disposal. With IMacros, you can browse to your preferred forums, enter your login name and password, create a new thread and write text in it, all the while searching for a specific word in the forums in a separate tab. Any browsing task can be automated with IMacros; people who often work on the Internet will rely on this tool as a bare necessity.