Read/WriteWeb has a new post up by Bilal Hameed discussing what he calls "The Sidebar Syndrome". I think the post has a few problems.
First, the final paragarph is a bit confused -- or maybe I'm just mis-reading it. Either way, I think it's worth clarifying this one thing. The Google Toolbar doesn't ship in Mozilla's Firefox. Google ships a version of Firefox with the Google Toolbar. Mozilla Firefox doesn't ship with any third party toolbars.
What Firefox does ship with is an integrated search field in the primary Firefox toolbar (the toolbar that contains the navigation controls and the address field.) That integrated search field contains multiple search services that the user can choose between and augment if they so decide.
This is very much not a "Google Toolbar". The Google Toolbar contains a wide variety of Google features and access to several of Googles services besides just search. In addition, it defaults as a full browser width toolbar that takes up (in my opinion) valuable content area real estate.
Second, I'd also like to point out that, contrary to what Bilal states in the post, a user most certainly can have multiple sidebars. They just don't all show at the same time. Firefox, out of the box, has two sidebars, one for bookmarks and one for history. Users can switch between sidebars from an item on the View menu or by clicking an optional toolbar icon for the specific sidebars. So, there's no reason that a user couldn't have several sidebars and easily switch between them.
This kind of negates some of what I think that Bilal was trying to say -- that the sidebar space was a zero sum game in a way that toolbars weren't because with sidebars there's only enough space one occupant.
Finally, I wrap up in agreement on one point. Sidebars are a decent way for features to be added to the browser and this space is going to be valuable. There will be more and more services offering up Firefox sidebars. In fact, Mozilla has already partnered with several other projects to ship Firefox sidebars. We call them Firefox Companions and they often extend somewhat beyond just the sidebar, but the idea is mostly the same. See the Firefox Joga.com Companion and Firefox Kodak Companion for a couple of examples.
I'm personally in favor of using more sidebar space rather than more toolbar space given the way widescreen displays are propogating and most web content being taller than it is wide. Then again, sidebars are nothing new and they haven't really taken off like toolbars so maybe I'm in a minority here.
