Tool bars: everyone has them, some don’t want them, and some think they’re places where the nails go to get hammered. But if you’ve ever used a search engine like Google or Yahoo, you’ve likely been prompted to install a tool bar. A tool bar is a menu in graphic form, a bar or box spread out across some portion of the screen with icons with each representing some particular command. For instance, in a word processing program, you’ll likely find a toolbar with icons for common commands such as “cut” and “Paste”. This provides faster access than having to click through several menus.
Some tool bars are specific to one kind of command (a variety of brush sizes in a painting program, for instance) while others are more all-purpose. Typically you can choose which tool bars you want to display, which is good because things can get cluttered, and every user has different opinions on what should be ready at hand.
On the Internet, you can download new tool bars to modify your personal browser and customize it to your specifications. The aforementioned Google and Yahoo tool bars are useful because they provide a box right there that you can search the Internet with – you just type in your term and retrieve the results, rather than having to navigate to the Google or Yahoo homepage and then search from there. Again, tool bars are all about convenience.
That convenience does come at a cost. Tool bars take up additional space on the screen, and you might wish to get rid of commands you don’t use so that you’ve got space for all those bookmarked pages or other material. Some tool bars are more sinister, though, installing software behind the scenes that tracks whatever data you use in or even around the toolbar. As such, as always, it’s important to think carefully before downloading and installing anything to your computer.