We all follow different web browsing lifestyles. The very fact that I used the word ‘lifestyles’ over here goes to show how serious I really am about this. The Mac browsing space is dominated by Safari and Firefox (although in our web stats Safari definitely edges out the fox by a huge margin). Safari, used by those who appreciate elegance in their web browser (and browsing experience), while Firefox remains the favourite among ‘power users’, and for good reason.
I’m not here to preach the merits of either, as it’s your choice which one you want to use. This post is about Safari, and my favourite plugins to go along with it. I don’t use an ad blocker or enhancement tool like Saft, so I’ve asked Phil to fill in for those areas. Sure we could have listed 50 plugins for Safari, but these are the ones we actually use on a day to day basis. All the plugins are compatible with the Safari 4 beta.
Inquisitor
Definitely a top favourite among Safari users, this ‘wow’ plugin from David Watanobe brings new meaning to instant search. The moment you start typing in your search bar, Inquisitor will pull search results from Google, allowing you to quickly jump to results without opening up Google or Yahoo.
The plugin is beautifully designed, is able to ‘sort of’ include additional search engines, and can display keyword suggestions as well. Inquisitor is a free plugin, highly recommended.
Click to Flash
A brilliant plugin we’ve written about before, Click to Flash prevents loading of any flash content unless you click on it. Considering how resource hungry Flash is, this plugin is a godsend. You can whitelist certain sites like YouTube so you don’t have to click every time.
It’s a free and open source plugin. Must have.
CosmoPod
There’s a million YouTube video downloaders out there. Some full fledged apps like TubeSock, while others depend on a simple bookmarklet. I personally haven’t tested all of the methods, but I like CosmoPod. The app places a button on your Safari Toolbar. The button will ‘activate’ whenever it detects flash video content on a page. Clicking it will download the video, and add it to your iTunes library.
There’s a whole lot of features in CosmoPod like simultaneous downloads, adding meta data, and if you have an Elegato turbo.264 encoder it will use that to speed up converting times. CosmoPod costs €6 ($8) for a license, so try it out if you frequently save video from the web.
1Password
You don’t know you need it until you use it. 1Password is one of the most indispensable tools for anyone who uses the web for more than 5 minutes. If you’re thinking, ‘Safari already has a password manager’, you have no idea what 1Password will do to your browsing experience.
There’s a lot more to 1Password than just filling out your passwords, and it has already been discussed previously in this review. Costing $40 for a license, 1Password is not cheap. But when it comes to functionality, there’s nothing to ace it.
Safari140
Another plugin by Watanabe, Safari140 allows you to quickly tweet from any website. If you find an interesting link you want to tweet about, just hit Ctrl+T and it loads up the tweet window, grabbing the page title and shortened url. It’s free, and damn useful.
Glims
Glims is a multi-feature plugin. If you’ve used either Saft or SafariStand then you’ve somewhat used Glims. Glims has features from both plugins and adds searchlike features from Inquisitor.
With Glims you can see thumbnails for both Google and Yahoo! search results and favicons will appear in the tabs. You can save sessions, and undo accidently tab closures. You can also have it auto search a page, just start typing without selecting anything, and Glims will search that page using the default search function. Probably the best feature of Glims is that it will auto-close the downloads window when a download finishes. Glims includes all this and much more for free, I’d highly recommend checking it out.
Safari Adblock
Exactly as advertised, Safari Adblock, will block just about any ad on the internet. There are some that it won’t catch, usually those are the ones that are custom and run by the site owners (like the ones on SA). If they are run by an ad server, you can most definitely say goodbye to them. Oh, and it’s free. (Alternatively, you could check out SafariBlock, also free).
TabExposé
I’d like to give a special mention to this plugin even though I’m not sure whether it’s really useful (been using this for just a few days). This plugin gives you Exposé for your tabs. Just press the button on the toolbar or the shortcut key, and all your tabs fly out into thumbnails, much like OS X’s beloved Exposé. The concept is super cool, but implementation is flawed. If you were expecting the same Exposé you’re used to on the Mac, prepare to be disappointed.
The tabs have no border shading so they look completely flat on your desktop. Second, the background is not dimmed out, so things look messy. And third, tabs were never meant to go the Exposé way. In my opinion we automatically know which tab a site is located, but TabExposé merely splashes your websites around in random order. TabExposé costs €5 for a license, but you can try it out before jumping in.
If you’re looking for even more plugins be sure to visit Pimp My Safari, the ultimate resource on Safari plugins. If you have any special plugins that you use, do share.
[Safari icon by seedling-design]
