Add a slew of useful functions to Internet Explorer with ALToolbar
Description: ALToolbar is a free Internet Explorer toolbar that offers a number of very useful functions straight from the browser, including an internet cleaner, advanced find, automatic site login with online password storage, online bookmark management , screenshot capture for websites, quick access to multiple search engines, a flash ad blocker, control by mouse gestures, and a few others.
Let me be clear first that I usually do not like toolbars and try to avoid them. I especially do not like toolbars when they offer functions and features that have little value-added, and then try to force you to use their own custom search page. The only toolbar that I have previously recommended on Freewaregenius is the Google Toolbar (see this post). ALToolbar, however, offers a number of functions with high value added and I have no qualms giving it my highest possible endorsement.
The reason I recommend ALToolbar is because it brings together a terrific collection of browser tools in one place. And although it does have it’s own customized search page, the last used search engine (e.g. Google or whatever other engine you like) will be used as default, or you can define your own default search provider.
Note that of the many functions that ALToolbar offers, two of these (the automatic password login ALPass and the Bookmark manager) actually store your information online. The idea behind this is to enable you to manage your bookmarks or site logins on one computer (say, at home), and then access these from your work computer for example such that you will always have access to the will always be in sync. These are discussed in mroe detail below. Here’s a list of all the functions ALToolbar has to offer:
- The user interface: the toolbar generally looks good but what is cool is that it allows you to maximize it (so that a text label is displayed next to each button) or minimize it so that only the icons appear. The latter option is very useful if you are interested in minimizing your browser toolbar clutter.
- Customizability: ALToolbar allows you to pick and choose in terms of the buttons you would like to display within the toolbar and/or the functions that you would like enabled. If you do not care about any offered function(s) you can disable it and use the remaining ones.
The search function: the idea here is to get quick access to any search engine (or websites such as YouTube or Dictionary.com). It also will highlight the search text on the results page, Google Toolbar style, for searches done with any of the supported engines. If, as an example, you often use Google, Wikipedia, and YouTube searches, you can install all of these (and many others) into the ALToolbar search function and access them quickly and easily by doing any of the following (a) pressing the ’search’ icon on the toolbar, (b) by right clicking twice in quick succession, or (c) by pressing shift twice on the keyboard. The last used search service becomes the default button on the toolbar.
The internet cleaner: you can use this to instantly erase any combination of: browsing history, cookies, temporary internet files, autocomplete information, saved passwords, and address bar history. You can tell it exactly what you want and do not want it to erase by checking the appropriate boxes in a checklist (see screenshot). This function is similar to that provided by CachePal, but ALToolbar offers more control over what is erased and in general it does it better.
Find text: similar to previously reviewed “Find as You Type“. This function will highlight any text in the browser screen that corresponds to what you are typing as you type it. It has buttons to quickly switch forwards/backwards acorss all found instances of the text, and the option for case sensitive finds and/or finding whole words only.
Browser screenshot capture: this is a fantastic function that gives you great flexibility when capturing screenshots from the browser. It allows you to capture a screenshot of a web page in its entirety, including the part that is not visible on screen. It is similar to Faststone Capture or Webshot but is better than both of these in that aside from grabbing whole pages or manually selecting an area, it can automatically detect and grab elements on the page (e.g. a table, a flash banner). After using this for about a week I can report that it can be extremely useful.
Mouse gestures: there are a number of built in mouse gestures that can be performed and can be associated with a number of pre-defined actions (back, forward, top/bottom of page, open in new window/new tab, refresh, close window, previous/next tab, minimize/maximize window, display search bar). The way to do these is right click and do the pre-defined gesture (a visual representation will appear on-screen). If this does not sound like it’s quite your cup of tea, try the “jump to top” and “jump to bottom” of the page gestures; you’ll probably find them to be very cool (I did).- Right click enable: you might have encountered sites which disable the right click context menu as a means of preventing you from saving images locally, etc. One of the services that ALToolbar provides is to override this and re-enable the right click (look for it in the preferences).
- Shortcuts: you can define keyboard shortcuts and associate them with sites. For example, you can set it such that it takes you to Freewaregenius.com when you enter “fg” in the address box, and so on. Can be a very handy way of getting to your favorite, frequently used sites.
Last but not least, here are two functions which save your information online and require that you create a personal ALToolbar account using a valid email address. Here’s more information:
- ALPass: this is an automatic login function that can store your passwords and logins and automatically fill them in for you when you need to. I reviewed this as a standalone program more than a year ago, but the component that used in the toolbar differs from the desktop version in that it stores your information online, such that you can access your most recent logins from multiple computers (assuming they have ALToolbar installed). This feature is actually very well implemented and I am guessing that you will like it. One thing that it does not have at the moment which would have been nice is importing logins/data from the desktop version of ALPass. Lastly, if you have security concerns read the security section below.
Bookmark management: fairly straightforward bookmark management, with your bookmarks stored online. Can import your local bookmarks, and will present you with a folder structure such that you can check a box next to the folders you want to import.
Security: you might wonder about (a) the reliability of storing your data online, in terms of being able to access it when you need to and it being preserved and not lost, and (b) data security in terms of being able to trust that it will not fall into the wrong hands or be subject to abuse.
With respect to (a), I know that although they recently had problems with their servers, the developers of ALToolbar recently underwent a massive server upgrade, so all should be well on that regard.
Point (b) is a little bit more complicated, but here’s my two cent’s worth. I have been using the desktop version of ALPass, the automatic password login component for almost two years for all my passwords without exception, so I figure if this company was in the business of stealing passwords I would have been adversely affected by now. They go to great lengths to explain that your data is encrypted on their servers, so nobody can read it even if they got access to it; and then it is transmitted over an encrypted connection (see this page). The question is whether you believe that these measures described here are actually the case… which I do not see a real reason to doubt, personally.
At the end of the day, though, it will boil down to a matter of trust: any login/password manager can be insecure (unless you clamp down on it with an airtight Firewall, a situation you do not want to be in the first place). If you are not comfortable thinking that your personal login and pass for a particular account is stored somewhere out there on a server then don’t do it.
Wish list:
- The ability to use the password management component while storing the information locally, for people who would rather not store their personal info online. Note: if you do not want to use the password management component you can remove it from the toolbar and just use the other functions.
- A version of ALToolbar for Firefox.
The verdict: this is probably the best free Internet Explorer add-on out there (and the more I use it the more I find this to be the case). Even if you are not interested in using the online functions the other functions alone are worth installing it for. Recommended!
Version Tested: 1.13
Compatibility: WinAll.
Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 4.73 megs).
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I just can’t believe anyone would willing hand out their passwords to another website. You know nothing about these people or the people they hire, or the people who can and will prowl their servers.
To each his own, I guess!
Interesting toolbar, psst…developers of IEPro, integrate some of the features from this one:)
I too wonder about storing logins and such online, but as most users infos can be ’seen’ when transmitted in certain instances, we each should exercise our individual discretion in how we secure our system(s) to begin with.
As always, great job with this/your site FreewareGenius!!
I wouldn’t worry about storing encrypted passwords online.
If you have an online bank account, credit card, Paypal, etc., THEY have your password stored on their servers, too…. and they KNOW your name and address.
Unless someone gets extremely lucky at guessing, they can’t get a random user/password combination that’s been encrypted.
That being said, I don’t store my bank or credit card PW’s anywhere but in my brain. So while I believe that my passwords are as safe with ALT as they would be anywhere else, I prefer to keep sensitive data to myself.
What is useful is saving PW’s from messageboards, newspapers, and other websites that have free memberships and no access to my digital $$. The worst that can happen there is that someone posts a message in my name, which in many cases might be a better, well-written comment than I could make
You aren’t using Firefox ?
Have to agree with pitzelberger. Firefox offers so many options with plugins why would you want to use anything else? (Except when you have to use IE because of poor website coding and then you just need it in minimalist mode)
Barry Cleave
http://proreviewer.com
@Wandering,
You’re right… your comment made me rethink what I wrote about the security aspect, so I went in and re-wrote it. I took out the part about my having corresponded with the ALToolbar developers by email to remove any suggestion that I know more about them than I do.
But in fact… I do know something about these guys: I have been using their desktop-based login/password filling software without any adverse consequences for almost two years, and at the very least I can say that I do not believe they are in the business of stealing passwords.
@Freewarefiend, guest: thanks for your input on this.
@Pitzelberger, Barry: I like to write about interesting browser extensions for IE and Firefox both.
@Barry Cleave, use IE Tab and IE View Lite add-ons for Firefox. They take care of the vast majority of IE-only sites.
everything you have described, i achieve by simply using Maxthon 2.
http://www.maxthon.com
Because I have been actually using maxthon for 4 or 5 years, i never saw the need switching to firefox.
Disclosure: I currently work for ESTsoft. (Well, until the end of March anyways.)
I’m the guy that wrote all the information at the ALTools web site, and for every detail about security, I checked, double-checked, and triple-checked everything for accuracy.
ESTsoft has no interest in stealing any information at all.
It is a privately held and profitable company with a very good reputation. The vast majority of computers in South Korea run software from ESTsoft (think 90% ). There’s almost nobody in Korea that doesn’t know “ALZip”. (I’ve never met anyone that didn’t know it, including friends that know next to nothing about computers.)
ESTsoft has several product divisions, but revenue for ALTools comes from corporations and government. They are free for home users.
It is in ESTsoft’s best interest to NOT know your passwords. And no unencrypted ALToolbar passwords are stored on any ALTools servers (it uses 2). That’s why there’s a warning about resetting your password — if you do, all your data will be lost forever.
You don’t have to take my word for it though. You can get a network sniffer like Wireshark and analyze packets yourself. Or get a debugger and find out what’s going on. You will see that all ALPass data is securely encrypted until it is decrypted client-side inside of ALToolbar on your own computer.
Now, that’s a lot of work to do, but you can verify it. (I certainly wouldn’t want to go through all of that though.)
Trust is an issue, but that will go for any piece of software that you install on your computer. It isn’t very difficult to write something to steal passwords and logins then send them somewhere. Once something is running on your computer, you’re at risk. I’ve never heard of a password manager that was a blackhat tool though.
Just FYI — I am using the ALPass Online functionality. And I’m definitely in the “more paranoid” camp when it comes to computer security. But I’m also much more knowledgeable about comptuer security than most people and know when to be paranoid, and when not to be.
As for the “browser warz”, my thoughts on the topic are here: http://renegademinds.com/Default.aspx?tabid=60&mid=415&ctl=ViewEntry&EntryID=118
The browsers are different and have varied strengths. It depends on what you want to do.
IE7 is a good browser. (BTW - The IE8 private betas are going on now.)
I’ve actually been using Opera for a while now (Firefox before that), but switched back to IE because ALToolbar gave me what was most important to me — solid Mouse Gestures. I still use all 3 browsers though, depending on where I am and what I’m doing. (Opera at the moment as I’m on my Korean WInXP box with IE6, which I refuse to use unless I must because it lacks tabs. Though this is becoming more frustrating as I really miss the Mouse Gestures.)
In any event, just thought I’d pop in here with a few comments. I’d be happy to respond to any questions. You can reach me through the ALTools site easiest.
Cheers,
Ryan
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@guest: The thing is, do you trust a little private company’s defense as much as that of banks? For banks we know they ARE all about security. And if someone steal from your account, they’ll keep a log on the transaction in detail. Even if their system got compromised, you can take them to courts to pay for your damage. If ALToolbar’s online password database got hacked, will you be able to sue ESTsoft to pay for your damage? Will there be even be any laws to support your case? Do ESTsoft even keep detailed logs on access to their password database?
That’s why I’m reluctant to store passwords online in third party’s database, there’s trust, there’s ONLY trust. You have nothing else to fall back on if something goes wrong. And it’s not just trust of the third party not stealing your passwords, it’s also trust that the said third party can provide sufficient security against external attacks, even more so than online banks, since for online banks at least there’s something else to fall back on.
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