Toolbar Tips, Tutorials and Updates

Welcome to the 4SharedReviews Toolbar Area

For anyone who would like to get up to speed with the toolbar that Shared Reviews members are finding makes quick work of voting, socializing and more, the pages included here will do that for you.  Included  is a bit of history about the Bar ahd some Video tutorials – all designed to make using the Bar an easy process.  Before downloading, I highly recommend that you visit the Privacy and Zero Tolerance Safety page and perhaps also review the TRUSTe information which will explain the TRUSTe certification that appears on pages related to the Toolbar , to ensure that you are informed about the level of trustworthiness that the Toolbar is supported and backed by.

Some recognition to those who make this worthwhile!

I’m probably one of the most surprised individuals on the planet right now – why?  An idea I literally “threw” together one evening has blossomed into an incredibly fun experience for me and has been proving  beneficial to SharedReviews members and I owe a debt of gratitude to all the members of SharedReviews who have embraced the “4 SharedReviews Tool Bar“.  Without your support, this project would likely still be sitting on one lone desktop – your support is the force driving me to continue to improve the experience you have with it and if it does that – I am thrilled.  Shared Reviews members are some of the most incredible people on the planet – and the Community as a whole is one that I am extremely proud to be a part of.  This bar is my way of giving back to my friends, to the Community as a whole and to the guys whose passion Shared Reviews is.  To all of you – a huge THANK YOU!

For those who may not yet know about the 4SharedReviews Toolbar or would like further info about the features and what each does – here you will find all the information you need to help you decide if this is something for you.    Below is some General information and links to pages that will assist you in learning what this ToolBar is all about and just how it can enhance your Shared Reviews experience.    Video Tutorials are being added as I have the time available to do so and hopefully you’ll find them informative and beneficial in bringing you up to speed, but first…

A Little History – Why the Toolbar was born

I live with a “Tim the Toolman” kind of guy minus the accident prone quirks – actually if you recall McGiver?  Well, my husband is the epitome of McGiverisms and after many years with him, I’ve begun to absorb some of his “make it better, make it powerful” tendencies.  When some of the members at SharedReviews.com began erecting Voting blogs, I decided to follow suit.  Once I had the blog up, I decided to link to some of the members blogs & their profile pages on SharedReviews.  From there the idea struck me that if members could have a way to Log-in to SR quickly,  locate their friends on the site easily,  get to other members Voting blogs faster and also have a way to communicate instantly with members whenever they wanted to – well then, that would be pretty cool.

So, on the evening of Sunday, March 22, 2009 I sat down and quite honestly the rest is a blur – when I’m in a creative zone time becomes oblivious and all things take on a very “auto-pilot” atmosphere – but when all was done, I had created a Toolbar that quickly installs into your browser by way of an “Add-On – compatible with both FireFox and IE, in a very quick and very smooth process.  The result?  SharedReviews.com at the click of a mouse.

I released the bar to the community on March 23, 2009 and 5 users adopted it quickly.  As you can see by the counter, more users are adopting the Bar and I couldn’t be happier than to be able to continue to make improvements and tweak the heck out of it to ensure it operates at its optimum so that you can too.

As a Community toolbar that means the community at SharedReviews has a say in what they would like to see/not see in the bar so it’s important that members who use it have the open opportunity to always feel free to contact me with suggestions/input – I value it all.  It’s your toolbar and it’s important that it adds value to your SharedReviews experience.

Is the ToolBar  Secure? Reliable?

The 4 SharedReviews Toolbar is 100% Malware, Adaware and virus free.  It is powered and downloaded from a TRUSTe certified site and as the developer, I attempt to ensure that every feature I implement within the bar meets or exceeds my personal expectations for reliability, integrity and beneficial operation.   I include here again,  the Privacy and Zero Tolerance statements which are an inherent part of Conduits relationship with it’s over 180,000 publishers and 38M bar users worldwide. This information is not too lengthy so I do encourage ALL  those considering adopting the  4SharedReviews Toolbar to browse through it before installing. Like the publishing/Development platform that I utilize, I wish to make every possible attempt to ensure that this Toolbar meets or exceeds your expectations and I will do my utmost to ensure that any issues you may experience that you believe may be Toolbar related will be looked into immediately.

To date there are two issues that have arisen and been resolved, both were related to Email providers.  I have, for transparency’s sake, noted these issues here along with the findings that allows me to continue to distribute the Toolbar in good faith and with continued confidence of the bar’s safety as an addition to your computer.

Here’s a run down of my background as it relates to my “geeky” side (please feel free to skip this section if your eyes start glazing over ;)):

• As a Power user since the late 1980’s, I’ve been involved with Hardware and Software troubleshooting, configuring of numerous systems at both the individual and commercial levels, and have had my share of Beta testing including for companies such as Intuit, Corel/Adobe, Delphi, Rosetta Stone and online learning centers such as DigitalThink eLearning (now under Convergys ownership).
• I was the sole troubleshooter for 750 individual users  when I owned a graphics design firm in the early 90’s at a time when Win95 was just making way for ME and I still didn’t have it on my system – that was interesting  and exhilarating all rolled into one 🙂
  
• I have some programming behind me as well: C/C++, Delphi, Visual, etc. and my site development endeavors have familiarized me with other languages.  I don’t claim expert levels in anything but I know just enough to be “dangerous”  as the saying goes 😉
• All that coupled with the fact that I’m really not too afraid to take on the challenges that come with “geekdom” … and there you have my history as it relates to this undertaking all there rolled into an itty bitty ball.

Features and How to Get and install the 4 SharedReviews Toolbar

This is simply a matter of clicking on the “Download our Bar” image over that way ==> and then accepting the installation.  The bar installs as an “Add-on” so once you have installed it, the browser must be restarted in order for the bar to become usable.  Removing the bar is just as simple – and is removed like any other “Add-on” – usually through the “Tools/Add-on” feature of your browser’s menu system.

Features currently include:

• Quick access to SharedReviews main page by simply clicking on the toolbar’s “4 SharedReviews” logo.  A drop down menu is accessible by clicking on the little black arrow just to the right of the logo.  This allows you to Log-in to Shared Reviews, Upgrade (although this feature is also done automatically as new features and changes are made by me), access to additional gadgets, a Shrink/Unshrink the toolbar (to save on screen real estate) and more.
• A Search bar which has become a very useful tool for members to check for plagiarized reviews very quickly. .
• One-click access to some SharedReviews member profiles and to all the Voting blogs currently available to make voting for reviews a quick and easy process.
• A handy-dandy calculator which you can change the look of to suit your taste.
• A message feature for messaging between toolbar users – I use this for announcements and such with the members when I’ve done changes/upgrades.
• A little radio – which allows you to rock to tunes while voting/surfing and which you can add or delete radio stations with just a mouse click or search for stations in your local area.
• A list of Smiley faces (user requested) which works on sites that accept HTML/BBCode output and which also provides code for each face in case the site you are on doesn’t accept the auto-insert feature.
• A Tools/Gadget menu that provides users with one-click access to Twitter/Facebook, GoogleMaps, A Currency converter, a few games, etc.  all show up in their own floating windows.
• Access to Google Notes/Bookmarks to make quick work of bookmarking those friends you visit often – providing one click access (See Tutorial)
• E-Mail notifier which allows you to see quickly whether any of your email accounts have received mail – and then with one click takes you to your inbox.
• Privacy Tool that allows you to quickly clear your cache/cookies and history whenever you wish.
• And of course – we all need to know what the weather is like in our location and what it will be like for the next few days so you also have a Weather feature.
• Currently a ‘ticker’ that alerts members to Red Friends – those friends who have for whatever reason, chosen to copy their reviews from other sites.  The alerts are processed via Twitter and can be accessed via that site as well.  I highly recommend that you follow us @SRRFAlerts to always have the latest information available regarding Red Friend alerts.
• Finally, a Private Chat Room and access to a one log-in stop to allow you to sign into any of your IM accounts from one interface (including MSN, AIM, ICQ, Jabber, etc) and which allows you to invite buddies and be notified when they are online and interested in chatting.  Our newest addition is a 4SR Social Network site which is a Private network accessible only for those members who are part of SharedReviews and users of the 4Shared Reviews toolbar.  A little piece of “let your hair down” real estate that I really enjoyed putting together and look forward to many of you visiting and joining.

What’s Ahead?

With me – you never know!  Most of the features are now in place and from now on it will more than likely be “improvement” changes that take place including making each of the floating windows for the various features capable of minimizing/resizing – at the moment only our Chat feature is set up this way – all others are floating windows but without the minimizing/resizing capacity.  Eventually, a way to allow users to incorporate their friends into a menu rather than using the Google Notes bookmark feature but that’s a future project I’ll get to as soon as I’ve completed a few assignments I have on the table.

And there you have it….

A way for SharedReviews members to work with their community site just a bit more efficiently and in particular, a way to make voting and checking for those suspect reviews just a little quicker.

Check out the tutorials (more will be added shortly) and once again…thank you for your support – it is indeed priceless!!

Lexxia