NooG is a lightweight internet search bar for the Windows desktop.

The program opens with a very compact interface, a mere 452 x 35 pixels on our test PC, which remains on top of other windows for easy access.

Type a keyword or two into the search bar, press Enter or hit the Search button, and your default browser should appear with the results of a Google search.

Need to know something else? We typed another term and a new tab appeared with the relevant results.

If you don't want to use Google, clicking the right-hand Menu button followed by "Search Engine" gives you three options: Google, Bing or Wikipedia.

The menu includes a "Search History" option, so we assumed that the down arrow to the right of the search bar would display a list of recent searches. But no: for some reason the author uses this to display an "Advanced Search" dialog, which offers more options and controls.

There is a detailed History dialog, and it's not exactly hard to find (Menu > History), but it's not very well implemented, either. You can scroll down and find an old search, for instance, but double-clicking doesn't immediately re-run the search. Instead it closes the History dialog - annoying if you want to look for something else afterwards - and transfers your search term to the main bar, which means it takes another click to view the results.