XToolBox

The Internet has become the primary source of almost any kind, and amount of information needed in any domain of activity. However, there are also specialized tools like XToolBox, which bring more comfort to search operations, providing quick search bars accessible directly from the tray area.

Without a setup process involved, the application can be easily carried around on a thumb drive to use on other computers besides your own. In this case, system registry entries remain intact, so the target PC’s stability is not affected. However, you need to make sure that .NET Framework is installed.

It goes directly to the tray area without any warning, but you can easily recognize it by the gear icon. There are two ways to use the application’s functions. Normal interaction with the icon brings up a custom browser, while the context menu provides search fields for a few, popular engines.

The browser itself might not tickle your fancy, being a rough, single-tabbed interface. Navigation is done through the dedicated URL field, with an additional search bar, with a corresponding drop-down menu to pick the search engine of interest like Google, Bing, Google Maps, or Wikipedia.

On the other hand, you can perform search faster through the context menu fields. All engines mentioned above come with their own field to skip you the selection process. Sadly, results are not shown in your default web browser, but in the application’s own simplistic browser. What’s more, there’s no hotkey support, and making it run with Windows needs to be done manually by adding a shortcut to the system Startup folder.

On an ending note, XToolBox comes with good intentions, and manages to provide a faster way of performing a search operation on one of several popular engines. However, the browser it comes with is a little underprepared, and rough for modern content, with no option to force it to show results in a preferred web browser.