Euskalbar is a supplement for Firefox to consult dictionaries and other linguistic resources (corpus, correctors...). It is a free software developed in collaboration between several people. Very useful, quite appreciated and successful. In the latest release coming out soon, it comes with significant changes.

About two years ago, the original author and the people who had recently been developing expressed their desire to leave the work they did in Euskalbar, and one of the collaborators until then, the Elhuyar Foundation, was responsible for the follow-up. In later versions, regular tasks such as adding dictionaries, repairing dictionaries, etc. have been performed. But in this version we had to completely remake Euskalbar from scratch.

In fact, Firefox now forces to use the new WebExtensions API to develop extensions. So far, extensions made using the previous technology have continued to work, but from Firefox 57, scheduled for November, only extensions that use WebExtensions will circulate. That is, as it was, Euskalbar would not work on new versions of Firefox. That's why we had to reprogram everything from the beginning.

Although our intention was that the new Euskalbar was equal to the previous one, it has not been possible to leave everything the same. Due to the new API, there are significant changes to the new version. The most remarkable thing is that Euskalbar has lost the name it gives: now it is not always a toolbar that is in sight, since in the API WebExtensions can not be done. Along with many others, we also asked Firefox to allow them to make the toolbars and accepted it. Before we started rebuilding Euskalbar we were waiting for this feature to be implemented, but two months ago we saw that they were not going to have ready for Firefox 57 and we had to move forward in another way. Now Euskalbar puts a button in the general toolbar and every time we want to use it, we must press this button to open it. You can also open the bar using a shortcut key (Ctrl+Shift+U), but in any case you need to click one more mouse click or key to use Euskalbar. If in the future Firefox offers the possibility to make the bar, we will convert the bar in Euskalbar if users wish.

In addition to this change in the basic structure, we have added or solved several dictionaries for the new version (EGAMaster dictionary, Pharmacy dictionary, Freelang dictionary, environmental thesaurus GEMET, Social Services dictionary, Glosbe dictionary, Gotzon Garate sayings, Kamusi Project dictionary, Laneki dictionary, Navarre Dialect Dictionary, etc. The list of all changes is in http://euskalbar.eu/version50/.

Soon we will upload the new version of Euskalbar to the Mozilla extensions website. When you review and accept them, you will be automatically updated to the new version. Others can install Euskalbar from the Mozilla extensions website.

Outstanding speakers include the translation of the interface into other languages, the combined search for all dictionaries, the “autocomplete” to help write the search word and the context menu on any page.

Remember that in the development of Euskalbar anyone can collaborate. If you do not know any programming, you can try it and report errors or request changes or new dictionaries on this page. If you have programming knowledge, you can download the code from the GitHub page of Euskalbar, make improvements or increases and then send it to accept. Or we also welcome you to the developer team!